BASSETERRE, St. Kitts - THE Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) is still reviewing grades from the 2020 Examinations, and that process could be completed by the end of March.
The reviews and protest of grades were made by teachers, parents and students last year based on a number of concerns about what was awarded, which prompted the queries coming out of last year’s sitting of the delayed Exams.
According to the Director of Operations, Dr. Nicole Manning, the regional body has completed over 90 percent of the reviews for both the Caribbean Secondary Certificate Examination (CSEC) and the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE).
While responding to a question from SKNVibes at a regional press conference, Dr. Manning disclosed that they received a total of 21,450 requests for reviews and they would have thus far completed 91 percent for that of CSEC.
In the case of CAPE, she announced that 93 percent of the reviews have been completed thus far.
Last year, CXC made several changes to the way the Examinations were administered at both the CAPE and CSEC levels.
In some instances, Paper Ones was only written and Paper Two was removed, while changes were made to Paper Three and School-Based Assessment Grading, all due to the impact the Coronavirus had on the education sector across the region.
The regional body came in for heavy criticisms and threats of lawsuit after students protested the grades they received.
In some cases, students received ungraded and absent absent in their results even though they sat the Examinations.
In response to the question of grade changes, the Director declared that there was no negative grade change during the review process.
In the CAPE review process, there were 9,999 review claims and 9,118 were completed with 1.77 percent grade changes being made, while there was 0.54 percent positive grade changes for CSEC.
“Given what we would have seen and what would have been happening because of COVID-19, and CXC always give consideration for issues of this kind for what we call hardship cases, and so we would have had further borderline considerations where we would have seen an 8.28 percent positive grade change for CAPE and 9.38 percent for CSEC,” explained Dr. Manning.
Many of the territories would have received completed grade review requests, and the Registrar of CXC, Dr. Wayne Wesley, has acknowledged that he is happy with the process despite the criticism of the minor grade changes that were made.
“We are satisfied with the review process because the review process would have reflected what the stakeholders would have requested. In the case that all persons submitting a review, those papers would have to be remarked, and that remarked process would then give a greater level of scrutiny on those paper [sic],” noted Wesley.
Meanwhile, the regional council confirmed that they have thus far registered more than 500,000 CSEC subject entries with 102,000 candidates and 107,000 CAPE subject entries with 27,000 candidates for this year’s Exams.
