Over 3,000 CXC results rectified last year after queries – Manickchand

Results from last year’s Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) examinations were rectified in the favour of students in over 3,000 cases, Minister of Education Priya Manickchand said on Thursday.

There were some 11,000 queries lodged after the announcement of last year’s Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) and Caribbean Advanced Proficiently Examination (CAPE) results and Manickchand said the students received better grades in over 3,000 cases. With the results of this year’s exams released on Wednesday, Manickchand told reporters that there have already been concerns raised about grades.

She said that students have reached out after receiving either low grades or no grades. She explained that previously, the issue was with the School Based Assessments (SBAs) as some schools did not send the grades to CXC. The ministry had said that a better system was being implemented to ensure that there was no recurrence. Manickchand said that she is not assuming that there was a fault as yet because the results were only released on Wednesday.

The results for CSEC and CAPE 2020 were released in September 2020 and were met with widespread complaints in Guyana and across the Caribbean. Following the many complaints of discrepancies with the results, the examination body had established a team to review the modified approach for the administration of the July/August 2020 CSEC and CAPE examinations. This entailed the moderation process applied to the SBAs for the examinations, and the grading process for the examinations, among other related matters.

CXC had said that the Independent Review Team had found its testing, marking and grading during the 2020 Examination cycle to be “technically sound and quality assured”. The Council had also said that it decided to implement a series of measures to address the crisis created by “the variance” between the expected and actual performance of students since “communications between various elements of the [education] system could have been more effective.” Many of the concerns had been raised after students and teachers across the region complained that based on the expected results and performance of the students the grades appointed needed to be amended.

Following the Council’s review,

Manickchand later announced that in Guyana, the issue stemmed from an internal protocol which went unnoticed. She had said that the Education Ministry did not notice that SBA grades were not submitted and was therefore asking the CXC to factor them into the final grades. Manickchand explained that the unsubmitted SBA grades went unnoticed by the ministry because at the time persons were on leave and other persons who were expected to fulfil their duties did not realise that the SBA grades were never submitted. She further explained that this had gone past the Ministry’s Secondary and Examinations divisions. As a result the grades awarded by CXC were based on the performance it saw. The ministry assured that it had developed a system to ensure that there is no recurrence of the situation.