Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies (UWI) and Chairman of the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC), Professor Hilary Beckles on Monday announced that an Independent Review Team will shortly begin work in relation to queries about this year’s CSEC and CAPE results.
He assured that this period of review and possible revisions would be consistent with the regulations of CXC.
In his statement, Professor Beckles praised CXC for its impressive delivery of the July 2020 regional examinations within the context of the COVID-19 logistics nightmare, and crippling global doubt about revised examinations systems and procedures. “I commend the team at CXC for their effort to serve the best they can – the people of our region,” Professor Beckles noted.
He acknowledged that concerns have been raised in the public domain with respect to the efficacy of procedures and systems used by CXC in its computation and declaration of student performance data are of great importance to the organisation.
According to Professor Beckles, CXC’s Registrar, Dr Wayne Wesley, and his team have met with distinguished regional Ministers of Education in order to discuss these concerns and identify the underlying causes with a view to moving forward and providing clarity to our stakeholders and enhanced support. He added that CXC is satisfied that Ministers have received explanations for its positions in light of the public discourse.
“It is understood that while there might be policy and technical issues to be addressed immediately, the maintenance of public trust going forward is paramount. There will be ongoing dialogue with regional Ministries of Education based upon the official gathering of data relevant to all ventilated concerns. Each and every formally reported case will be reviewed and where remedies are required, they will be applied.”
Following the announcement of this year’s results, there has been widespread outrage across the Caribbean region. Education Ministers have been calling on CXC to review the “faulty” results which, according to them, have seen students receiving very low grades, ungraded and absent.
During a press conference last Friday, CXC’s Registrar reported that when compared to previous years, the performances this year remained the same in terms of candidates receiving acceptable grades for both CSEC and CAPE. “So, overall, the region would have registered an improved performance for CAPE and CSEC,” Wesley had declared.
