Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion says there have been no­table im­prove­ments by lo­cal stu­dents in this year’s Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am­i­na­tion (CAPE) and Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate (CSEC) ex­ams, with the over­all pass rates and sub­ject-spe­cif­ic re­sults show­ing “sus­tained high per­for­mance.”

How­ev­er, the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tion Coun­cil (CXC), which al­so not­ed marked im­prove­ment in stu­dents’ per­for­mances across the re­gion, lament­ed that there has al­so been an in­crease in cheat­ing.

Yes­ter­day, stu­dents in this coun­try and across the Caribbean were able to ac­cess the May/June 2025 re­sults for the CAPE and CSEC ex­am­i­na­tions.

The Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry, in a state­ment about the re­sults, said for CAPE, a to­tal of 8,035 can­di­dates reg­is­tered for Units I and II, achiev­ing an over­all pass rate of 95.72 per cent for Grades I–V—an im­prove­ment over 2024. High-lev­el pass­es (Grades I–III) were record­ed in 72.72 per cent of sub­ject en­tries. Unit I achieved a 95.94 per cent pass rate, with 27 of 31 sub­jects sur­pass­ing 90 per cent pass­es, and sev­er­al ar­eas—in­clud­ing Agri­cul­tur­al Sci­ence, Food and Nu­tri­tion, Ge­og­ra­phy, and Per­form­ing Arts—record­ing 100 per cent suc­cess.

Im­prove­ments were record­ed in 13 sub­jects, among them Ac­count­ing, Chem­istry, Eco­nom­ics, Pure Math­e­mat­ics, and French.

The min­istry said Unit II can­di­dates achieved a 95.34 per cent pass rate, up from 93.95 per cent in 2024, with six sub­jects at­tain­ing per­fect re­sults, in­clud­ing Art & De­sign and Elec­tri­cal and Elec­tron­ic En­gi­neer­ing Tech­nol­o­gy.

At the CSEC lev­el, 22,693 can­di­dates wrote the ex­am­i­na­tions, with 117,984 sub­ject en­tries. The over­all pass rate for Grades I–III climbed to 70.65 per cent, up from 68 per cent in 2024. Pass­es in five or more sub­jects rose to 61.79 per cent, com­pared to 58.54 per cent last year, while 51.02 per cent achieved five or more sub­jects, in­clud­ing Math­e­mat­ics and Eng­lish A.

Ac­cord­ing to a state­ment, Math­e­mat­ics re­sults im­proved to 45.89 per cent from 42.59 per cent in 2024, and Eng­lish A climbed to 80.66 per cent from 78.42 per cent. No­table gains were al­so record­ed in Bi­ol­o­gy, Chem­istry, Ge­og­ra­phy, Prin­ci­ples of Ac­counts, and Span­ish.

Dur­ing a news con­fer­ence in the Cay­man Is­lands, mean­while, CXC of­fi­cials said there was over­all im­prove­ment in stu­dents’ per­for­mance, with a greater num­ber achiev­ing five or more sub­jects, in­clud­ing Math­e­mat­ics and Eng­lish.

CXC di­rec­tor of op­er­a­tions Dr Nicole Man­ning not­ed that while the up­ward trend in pass­es was en­cour­ag­ing, the or­gan­i­sa­tion was trou­bled by an in­crease in re­port­ed cas­es of aca­d­e­m­ic dis­hon­esty across both CSEC and CAPE as­sess­ments.

“This year, we saw an all-time high of 80 ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties, not good, not good. It there­fore means that these can­di­dates, of the 80, may have dif­fer­ent penal­ties, and I can tell you the ma­jor­i­ty of these can­di­dates are, in fact, it was, about over 40 or 50 per cent would have their re­sults can­celled.”

Man­ning said the breach­es ranged from the use of unau­tho­rised de­vices to col­lu­sion dur­ing on­line and in-per­son ex­ams. She urged stake­hold­ers to “re­main vig­i­lant” to pre­serve the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the re­gion’s qual­i­fi­ca­tions.

In a ma­jor pol­i­cy up­date, Man­ning an­nounced that be­gin­ning in 2026, stu­dents will be al­lowed to use Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence (AI) tools to com­plete their School-Based As­sess­ments (SBAs). She ex­plained that this change will be ac­com­pa­nied by clear guide­lines to en­sure AI is used eth­i­cal­ly and to en­hance learn­ing, not re­place it.

Mean­while, CXC CEO Dr Wayne Wes­ley said the im­prove­ment in the per­cent­age of stu­dents achiev­ing at least five sub­jects, in­clud­ing Math­e­mat­ics and Eng­lish, will au­gur well for the re­gion’s econ­o­my.

“We are mov­ing in the right di­rec­tion, and it al­so means that more per­sons are do­ing bet­ter than be­fore, and we need to con­tin­ue on that trend, and I want to con­grat­u­late all the mem­ber states who have been im­ple­ment­ing strate­gies for treat­ing in­di­vid­u­als for lit­er­a­cy and nu­mer­a­cy.”

Wes­ley al­so not­ed that the in­tro­duc­tion of the Caribbean-Tar­get­ed Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate will see ad­just­ments to the cur­rent syl­labus. He said it will al­low stu­dents to com­plete sub­ject ar­eas in small­er, tar­get­ed com­po­nents.

Con­tact­ed on the re­sults yes­ter­day, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath said while T&T sup­port­ed ini­tia­tives that strength­en ed­u­ca­tion out­comes, “our coun­try is not par­tic­i­pat­ing in the ini­tial pi­lot phase of the CTEC pro­gramme sched­uled to com­mence in Sep­tem­ber 2025.”

He said in­stead, the min­istry will close­ly mon­i­tor the pi­lot’s progress and out­comes be­fore mak­ing a de­ter­mi­na­tion on adop­tion.

“This is an im­por­tant in­no­va­tion in the re­gion­al ed­u­ca­tion land­scape. We will study the ev­i­dence from the pi­lot, as­sess its im­pact, and de­ter­mine its suit­abil­i­ty for our na­tion­al con­text be­fore com­mit­ting to im­ple­men­ta­tion,” the min­is­ter stat­ed.