By Radha Motielall
[www.inewsguyana.com] – The Guyana Government will be expending “hundreds of thousands” of United States Dollars to facilitate the rescheduling of CXC, CSEC examinations on May 11, 2015.
This is according to the Cabinet Secretary Dr. Roger Luncheon, who, while he could not give an exact cost of the rescheduling of the examinations, estimated the expenditure to be in the “hundreds of thousands US dollars”.
With General and Regional Elections in Guyana slated for May 11th, the examinations which should have been written on May 11th and 12th, are now scheduled to be written on June 15th and 16th, 2015, respectively.
The Education Ministry had said that this decision was made following a series of consultations where possible options were explored, discussed and considered before the decision was taken to reschedule the examinations.
The large sum required now to facilitate that rescheduling will fund a complete resetting of the subjects to be written on those dates, by the Caribbean Examination Council, for Guyana, exclusively.
This is necessary to prevent the Guyanese students from being privy to the exam papers they will have to take at a later date.
CXC’s Registrar Glenroy Cummerbatch had said that in light of the issue of regional integration and the possibility of information on the exam papers reaching to Guyana because of the rescheduling, a substitute paper which is referred to as a “parallel paper” will be written by the Guyanese candidates.
According to him, these parallel papers will not reflect the same questions, wordings and numbers as that of the initial paper, but will be parallel in terms of difficulty, context and demand. “We always have what we call backup papers so if something goes amiss there would be additional papers waiting that we can use,” Cummerbatch said.
CSEC exams scheduled for June 15 include at 9:00am: Agricultural Science (double award) – Paper 2, Agricultural Science (Single award) – Paper 2, Theatre Arts – Paper 1; and at 1:00pm: Electrical and Electronic Technology – Paper 1 and Food and Nutrition – Paper 2.
CAPE exams scheduled for the same day include at 9:00am: Geometrical and Mechanical Engineering Drawing Unit 1 – Paper 2, History Unit 1 – Paper 2 and Art and Design Unit 1 and 2 – Paper 2 and 3; and at 1:00pm: Communications Studies – Paper -2 .
CSEC exams scheduled for June 16 include at 9:00am: Home Economics: Management – Paper 2, and Technical Drawing – Paper 2; and at 1:00pm: Electrical and Electronic Technology – Paper 2. CAPE exams scheduled for the same day include at 9:00am: French Unit 2 – Paper 2 and Environmental Science Unit 2 – Paper 2; and at 1:00pm: Pure Mathematics Unit 1 – Paper 2 and Agricultural Science Unit 2 – Paper 2.
