This year, the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) has recorded its highest performance over the last three years in the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE) and saw an increase in the number of candidates that sat the May/June regional examinations.
Director of Operations at CXC, Dr Nicole Manning, stated that students generally achieved “acceptable grades” and reported that CAPE recorded 92.15% passes from 2021 to 2023.
In singling out subjects, Dr Manning, speaking at the official release ceremony in St Kitts and Nevis shared that Communication Studies saw 94%. She said Caribbean Studies saw an increase in overall performance from 94% last year to 97% this year, with 18% receiving grade ones, compared to last year’s 14% and 11% the previous year.
In French (Unit Two), the overall performance stood at 99%, moving from 16% last year to 41% of students getting grade ones.
Speaking to the increase in registrants, Dr Manning reported: “We saw an increase in CAPE to 14,044 coming from 5,449 subject entries in 2022, and likewise an increase in the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) from 78,801 to 87,164. You’ll see that we are at the highest over the last three years. We’re at 92.15% of candidates receiving acceptable grades from 2021 to 2023.”
Dr Manning cited the increase as a sign that “we are out of the woods” from the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, of concern to CXC is absenteeism. She said although “We’re seeing a reduction. There’s still a need for concern as educators where candidates as much as for CAPE 9,974 candidates were absent from exams. These are candidates who registered for examinations and did not turn up. You well imagine that these candidates are ungraded.”
Therefore, she said CXC is encouraging electronic testing, as an option for students to sit exams.
On School-Based Assessment (SBA) for CAPE, Dr Manning said 90,299 candidates were set to submit them, with a 1%. increase from last year in the SBA’s non-submission.
She encouraged students, principals, teachers, and parents to work with students in completing SBAs.
“CSEC SBA records show 444,650 candidate entries with 94.42% being submitted and 5.36% not submitted to teachers,” she said.
Unfortunately, 2023 had a few issues, Dr Manning said, recalling a breach in CSEC Mathematics (paper two) on May 17 in Jamaica and a second breach where some scripts and question papers were stolen on June 14 from a centre.
She said “CXC immediately investigated and determined the source of the leak and the decision to use the modified approach was determined (using SBAs and paper one scores). The investigation continues within the territory and we are working with the police to close that matter.”
Consequently, of the 81,649 candidates registered for the Maths only 76,836 sat the tests.
Dr Manning said there was an overall improvement in performance at 43%, up from 37% last year and 41% the prior year. The number of grade ones was up slightly, from 6% last year to 8%. There was also a two% increase in the number of grade twos and grade threes for this subject to reach 14% and 2%, respectively, when compared to last year’s results.
She also made mention of some of the hardships faced in different territories, like flooding in T&T, the deadly fire in Guyana, and hurricanes in St Lucia and St Vincent and the Grenadines that caused students to miss examinations. However, those affected were allowed to sit the same examination electronically, on another date.
Other irregularities and hardships CXC faced this year included using cell phones in the examinations, cheating, disruptive behaviour, plagiarism and impersonation.
As CXC celebrates 50 years, CXC registrar and CEO Dr Wayne Wesley said “we are cognizant of the need to change and transform for greater regional impact; that will see us repositioning ourselves by re-imagining our philosophy to recreate multiple pathways for students to demonstrate their competence.”
He went on, “We are rethinking our qualification framework where a competency skills-based approach first, is being contemplated…we are rethinking our assessment and validation frameworks where we will begin to provide for progressive, flexible assessment.”
He said in future, the curriculum designed by CXC will be uitilised alongside national programmes.
Dr Wesley stressed that CXC wants a system to realise students’ full potential “an education system that is transformed moving away from a failure approach speaking of what students have not achieved, but moving to speaking of what students have achieved.”
Last Thursday’s regional ceremony was broadcasted on the Zoom platform.
Photo caption: Director of Operations at CXC, Dr Nicole Manning
CXC records above average performance in May/June examinations
This year, the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) has recorded its highest performance over the last three years in the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE) and saw an increase in the number of candidates that sat the May/June regional examinations.
Director of Operations at CXC, Dr Nicole Manning, stated that students generally achieved “acceptable grades” and reported that CAPE recorded 92.15% passes from 2021 to 2023.
In singling out subjects, Dr Manning, speaking at the official release ceremony in St Kitts and Nevis shared that Communication Studies saw 94%. She said Caribbean Studies saw an increase in overall performance from 94% last year to 97% this year, with 18% receiving grade ones, compared to last year’s 14% and 11% the previous year.
In French (Unit Two), the overall performance stood at 99%, moving from 16% last year to 41% of students getting grade ones.
Speaking to the increase in registrants, Dr Manning reported: “We saw an increase in CAPE to 14,044 coming from 5,449 subject entries in 2022, and likewise an increase in the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) from 78,801 to 87,164. You’ll see that we are at the highest over the last three years. We’re at 92.15% of candidates receiving acceptable grades from 2021 to 2023.”
Dr Manning cited the increase as a sign that “we are out of the woods” from the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, of concern to CXC is absenteeism. She said although “We’re seeing a reduction. There’s still a need for concern as educators where candidates as much as for CAPE 9,974 candidates were absent from exams. These are candidates who registered for examinations and did not turn up. You well imagine that these candidates are ungraded.”
Therefore, she said CXC is encouraging electronic testing, as an option for students to sit exams.
On School-Based Assessment (SBA) for CAPE, Dr Manning said 90,299 candidates were set to submit them, with a 1%. increase from last year in the SBA’s non-submission.
She encouraged students, principals, teachers, and parents to work with students in completing SBAs.
“CSEC SBA records show 444,650 candidate entries with 94.42% being submitted and 5.36% not submitted to teachers,” she said.
Unfortunately, 2023 had a few issues, Dr Manning said, recalling a breach in CSEC Mathematics (paper two) on May 17 in Jamaica and a second breach where some scripts and question papers were stolen on June 14 from a centre.
She said “CXC immediately investigated and determined the source of the leak and the decision to use the modified approach was determined (using SBAs and paper one scores). The investigation continues within the territory and we are working with the police to close that matter.”
Consequently, of the 81,649 candidates registered for the Maths only 76,836 sat the tests.
Dr Manning said there was an overall improvement in performance at 43%, up from 37% last year and 41% the prior year. The number of grade ones was up slightly, from 6% last year to 8%. There was also a two% increase in the number of grade twos and grade threes for this subject to reach 14% and 2%, respectively, when compared to last year’s results.
She also made mention of some of the hardships faced in different territories, like flooding in T&T, the deadly fire in Guyana, and hurricanes in St Lucia and St Vincent and the Grenadines that caused students to miss examinations. However, those affected were allowed to sit the same examination electronically, on another date.
Other irregularities and hardships CXC faced this year included using cell phones in the examinations, cheating, disruptive behaviour, plagiarism and impersonation.
As CXC celebrates 50 years, CXC registrar and CEO Dr Wayne Wesley said “we are cognizant of the need to change and transform for greater regional impact; that will see us repositioning ourselves by re-imagining our philosophy to recreate multiple pathways for students to demonstrate their competence.”
He went on, “We are rethinking our qualification framework where a competency skills-based approach first, is being contemplated…we are rethinking our assessment and validation frameworks where we will begin to provide for progressive, flexible assessment.”
He said in future, the curriculum designed by CXC will be uitilised alongside national programmes.
Dr Wesley stressed that CXC wants a system to realise students’ full potential “an education system that is transformed moving away from a failure approach speaking of what students have not achieved, but moving to speaking of what students have achieved.”
Last Thursday’s regional ceremony was broadcasted on the Zoom platform.
