Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic saw three con­sec­u­tive cy­cles of Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil (CXC) as­sess­ments de­vi­ate from their norm. How­ev­er, the coun­cil will be eval­u­at­ing the na­ture of 2023’s tests over the next few weeks.

Re­spond­ing to a ques­tion dur­ing the launch of 2022’s re­sults yes­ter­day, CXC Di­rec­tor of Op­er­a­tions Dr Nicole Man­ning said the task is be­ing un­der­tak­en this month.

“We did say it last year, that this 2022 would have been the last time that we’re ex­pect­ing this re­duc­tion giv­en the fact that we are see­ing us go­ing back to some lev­el of nor­mal­cy and school open­ing. So, our team will do the re­view and we will see if there’s any­thing dif­fer­ent,” Man­ning said dur­ing a Zoom con­fer­ence from barab­dos.

“That will be com­mu­ni­cat­ed in this Sep­tem­ber pe­ri­od, like we will al­so start the con­sul­ta­tion and com­mu­ni­cate with­in Sep­tem­ber al­so.”

Some of the changes to the tra­di­tion­al ex­am were a re­duc­tion in Sec­ondary Based As­sess­ments (SBA) re­quire­ments by as much as 50 per cent in some in­stances, a re­lease of top­ics for Pa­per 2, a de­fer­ral of some or all ex­am­i­na­tions to ei­ther Jan­u­ary or June 2023, an ex­ten­sion in the sub­mis­sion of SBAs by six weeks and can­di­dates could de­fer up to the day be­fore the ex­am.

De­spite the re­laxed cri­te­ria for SBAs, Dr Man­ning not­ed that over 30,000 stu­dents across the re­gion did not sub­mit any—4,838 can­di­dates for CAPE and 25,967 for CSEC.

While these were an im­prove­ment over last year’s fig­ures, she not­ed the vol­ume of those who did not sub­mit the as­sess­ments was still con­cern­ing for ed­u­ca­tors.

She not­ed that while this year saw the least num­ber of stu­dents reg­is­ter­ing for CAPE over the last four years, it ex­pe­ri­enced a re­duc­tion in the num­ber of stu­dents miss­ing the ex­ams.

“That is a very good sig­nal for us be­cause it tells us that there is a light at the end of the tun­nel and some lev­el of re­turn­ing to nor­mal­cy,” she said.

For CSEC, she said there was al­so a re­duc­tion in stu­dents reg­is­ter­ing for the ex­am but un­like CAPE, there was al­so a de­crease in the num­ber of stu­dents at­tend­ing the ex­ams.