BASSETERRE, St. Kitts - DISCUSSIONS are ongoing to determine whether the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) will waive the review fees for students who sat this year’s CSEC and CAPE exams.
This was confirmed by Minister of Education Jonel Powell during an interview with SKNVibes News on Tuesday evening (Oct. 27).
This year’s examinations were affected by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and resulted in a new modality used for the administration of grades, which has caused significant controversy in the way grades were arrived at.
Many students and teachers had expressed concerns over the present grades, forcing a number of governments to push for a review.
But with a US$15 price attached to every query made, who will be footing that bill?
Minister Powell disclosed that there was a sub-committee established to discuss the way forward on that matter and a report was compiled with recommendations, which is now to be discussed by the Council “to see if we can come to some agreement on what will be the way going forward”.
“But generally speaking, the suggestion coming from the Review Committee indicates that we are hoping that CXC would foot or absorb the cost of review, in light of the extraordinary situation that we found ourselves in this year,” the Minister explained.
The Education Minister, when pressed on if the Government will seek to fill the void if the regional examination body does not okay the waiver, noted that the Government would have to take all factors into account before a decision could be made.
“Well we would have to look at all things in context, bearing in mind that whatever the final decision is, the Government of St. Kitts and Nevis will look to see what it can do to give assistance.”
Against that backdrop, Minister Powell said that there are not many people in the Federation seeking reviews. “People do seem to forget that every year we do have reviews and there is a process for that,” he added.
At the time of the interview however, the Minister did not have the statistics on how many requests for reviews were put forward by students in the Federation.
