This year’s Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate (CSEC) ex­am saw a dis­ap­point­ing per­for­mance in Math­e­mat­ics by sec­ondary school stu­dents, which has be­come a con­cern for the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tion Coun­cil (CXC).

Yes­ter­day, CXC re­leased the re­sults for both CSEC and the Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am (CAPE).
Based on the re­sults, CSEC stu­dents had an over­all ac­cept­able per­for­mance of 36 per cent, down from 43 per cent last year. 

Ac­cord­ing to CXC CEO Dr Wayne Wes­ley, stu­dents’ fail­ure to get a full cer­tifi­cate in­clu­sive of Math­e­mat­ics and Eng­lish is an ob­sta­cle to re­gion­al growth and de­vel­op­ment and since 2018, has av­er­aged at over 11,000. 

“We have been los­ing al­most 11,500 stu­dents on av­er­age who will not ful­ly ma­tric­u­late in­to uni­ver­si­ty be­cause you need Math and Eng­lish. You’ll have 11,500 stu­dents who will be un­der-em­ployed if they are be­cause if you don’t have Math and Eng­lish, em­ploy­ers are go­ing to pay you less. You have stu­dents who will re­quire re­work,” Dr Wes­ley said. 

“Most im­por­tant­ly, it is hav­ing a neg­a­tive ef­fect on the eco­nom­ic com­pet­i­tive­ness of the re­gion be­cause you’re hav­ing less stu­dents be­ing able to dri­ve the in­no­va­tion that is re­quired for the econ­o­my to ad­vance and for crit­i­cal think­ing and prob­lem-solv­ing at­ti­tudes to be de­vel­oped. So, we are in a very chal­leng­ing time that we need to give greater at­ten­tion to Math­e­mat­ics and Eng­lish. Let’s en­sure that stu­dents leav­ing the school sys­tem, if they don’t have any­thing else, let’s en­sure that they are nu­mer­ate and lit­er­ate.”  

To ad­dress these is­sues, Dr Wes­ley said CXC has as­sem­bled a team to cre­ate stan­dards for lit­er­a­cy and nu­mer­a­cy. This team will col­lab­o­rate with AI to de­vise spe­cif­ic in­ter­ven­tions for im­prove­ment and iden­ti­fy op­por­tu­ni­ties for de­vel­op­ment. The aim of this pro­gramme is to sup­port the ex­ist­ing ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Dr Wes­ley said CXC is look­ing in­to us­ing AI tools, such as Chat GPT, to en­hance the teach­ing and learn­ing process.

“This is not in­tend­ed to be the panacea, but I think as an ex­am­in­ing body, we need to as­sist the ecosys­tem col­lec­tive­ly, us to­geth­er will have to sit down and fig­ure out a way to cor­rect this se­ri­ous prob­lem im­pact­ing the de­vel­op­ment of the hu­man cap­i­tal of the re­gion.” 

Mean­while, CXC al­so re­port­ed an in­crease in stu­dent in­frac­tions. There were a to­tal of 54 ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties (six at CAPE and 49 at CSEC), com­pared to 36 last year (17 at CAPE and 19 at CSEC).

The cheat­ing meth­ods in­clud­ed the use of cell­phones, smart­watch­es, pass­ing notes, and even one at­tempt to im­per­son­ate a can­di­date.

“Of course, the sit­u­a­tion was iden­ti­fied, and the can­di­date is not on­ly dis­qual­i­fied but de­barred for two years. So, it’s a very se­ri­ous mat­ter,” CXC’s Di­rec­tor of Op­er­a­tions Dr Nicole Man­ning said. 

“Ma­te­ri­al­ly, the in­crease is re­al­ly the util­i­sa­tion of unau­tho­rised de­vices. Pre­dom­i­nant­ly, that’s your smart­watch, phones. While it is im­por­tant for us to ac­tu­al­ly do the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and the re­search as to why this has in­creased, usu­al­ly, as I made men­tion, can­di­dates are ad­mit­ted­ly say­ing ‘I would not have been pre­pared be­cause I’m Googling the an­swer’, or ‘I am try­ing to check my phone for some in­for­ma­tion that I would have placed there’. You al­so have unau­tho­rised ma­te­ri­als where can­di­dates take ac­tu­al pa­per and try to take the pa­per in and they are caught. Some­times can­di­dates share in­for­ma­tion across. So, it’s speak­ing to a lev­el of ill-pre­pared­ness for the ex­am,” she added.  

There were al­so con­cerns raised about ab­sen­teeism. At the CAPE lev­el, there was a five per cent ab­sen­teeism rate, which was high­er than in 2023.
Sim­i­lar­ly, CSEC had a 6.66 per cent ab­sen­teeism rate com­pared to last year’s 6.9 per cent. The main rea­sons for ab­sen­teeism were per­son­al emer­gen­cies, stu­dents not feel­ing ad­e­quate­ly pre­pared, doc­u­ment­ed ill­ness, a death in the fam­i­ly, or per­son­al pref­er­ence not to at­tend.

Al­though there was a slight re­duc­tion com­pared to last year, CXC is con­cerned about an av­er­age of three per cent and four per cent of stu­dents fail­ing to sub­mit school-based as­sess­ments to the coun­cil and their teach­ers re­spec­tive­ly.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment about Trinidad and To­ba­go’s CAPE and CSEC re­sults, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said she was in Bar­ba­dos on as­sign­ment. She con­firmed re­ceiv­ing the sta­tis­tics and com­mit­ted to pe­rus­ing it be­fore is­su­ing a state­ment.

Oth­er ex­am re­sults

CSEC

Bi­ol­o­gy - 76% in 2024 com­pared to 76% in 2023

Caribbean His­to­ry - 68% in 2024 com­pared to 72% in 2023

Chem­istry - 67% in 2024 com­pared to 64% in 2023

Eng­lish A - 77% in 2024 com­pared to 76% in 2023

French - 58% in 2024 com­pared to 57% in 2023

HSB - 71% in 2024 com­pared to 80% in 2023

IT - 86% in 2024 com­pared to 81% in 2023

In­te­grat­ed Sci­ence - 67% in 2024 com­pared to 58% in 2023

Math - 43% in 2024 com­pared to 36% in 2023

Of­fice Ad­min - 89% in 2024 com­pared to 91% in 2023

Physics - There was an in­crease in over­all per­for­mance but da­ta wasn’t shown

POA - 72% in 2024 com­pared to 67% in 2023

POB - 80% in 2024 com­pared to 80% in 2023

So­cial Stud­ies - 54% in 2024 com­pared to 62% in 2023

Span­ish - 54% in 2024 com­pared to 50% in 2023

CAPE

Bi­ol­o­gy Unit I- 88% in 2024 com­pared to 84% in 2023

Bi­ol­o­gy Unit II - 92% in 2024 com­pared to 91% in 2023

Caribbean Stud­ies - 97% in 2024 com­pared to 95% in 2023

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Stud­ies - 92% in 2024 com­pared to 95% in 2023

French Unit I - 95% in 2024 com­pared to 95% in 2023

French Unit II - 100% ac­cept­able grade, 10% re­duc­tion for Grade 1

IT Unit I - 94% in 2024 com­pared to 95% in 2023

IT Unit II - 96% in 2024 com­pared to 96% in 2023

In­te­grat­ed Math - 68% in 2024 com­pared to 73% in 2023

Lit­er­a­tures in Eng­lish Unit I - 94% in 2024 com­pared to 94% in 2023

Lit­er­a­teurs in Eng­lish Unit II - 97% in 2024 com­pared to 95% in 2023

Physics Unit II - 96% in 2024 com­pared to 97% in 2023

Pure Math Unit I - 93% in 2024 com­pared to 86% in 2023

Pure Math Unit II - 91% in 2024 com­pared to 94% in 2023

Tourism Unit I - 92% in 2024 com­pared to 94% in 2023

Tourism Unit II - 98% in 2024 com­pared to 98% in 2023