Ministry to announce review of CSEC, CAPE 2020 results today
– Minister Manickchand
Minister of Education, Hon. Priya Manickchand says the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) and the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE) 2020 results would be announced on Wednesday. She made this statement on the side-lines of a sod-turning ceremony for the Martyrs’ Ville Nursery School on Tuesday.
This is following a review of the results announced last year by the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) which revealed several discrepancies.
Minister Manickchand said currently, the review process for CSEC is 96 per cent complete with about 120 outstanding results, while the review for CAPE is at 93 per cent with 33 outstanding results. She said the Ministry is compiling data and was able to make this determination based on those facts. Minister Manickchand also said while the review process was expected to be completed by January, it was delayed due to Covid.
“The problem is that this is happening in Barbados and Barbados is currently under a COVID-19 lockdown so CXC had promised that they would finish the review process by January 2021 and that didn’t happen and now that they are in lockdown, it is uncertain when they would finish but these are some of the hardships when you have a pandemic,” she said.
Additionally, Minister Manickchand says CXC is now offering students the option to write certain subjects in January 2022, with this year’s School-Based Assessment (SBAs) if they are not prepared for the upcoming June exam.
“CXC does not offer the same ambit of subjects in January only some are offered. So, they have a menu of what they are to offer as new things this year. For example, you can write some [subjects] in June/July and others in January. So, if you feel you can prepare for four, then do so in January and they are giving a late date by which people can make that decision, I think that is at the end of May,” she said.
To this end, a meeting with CXC and the Council for Human and Social Development has been set for February 28 to address concerns.
Minister Manickchand said a monitoring process has been implemented to ensure students are in compliance with the requirements for SBAs and preparation for the upcoming exams.
“Last year, we had a bit of a disaster in how CXC was managed in terms of SBAs and we had a whole outcry when the SBAs came back. An investigation into that led us to realise a lot of schools were not submitting on time or adequate information or submitting at all. We had three schools who did not submit while the kids did it,” she added. The Ministry is in negotiations with CXC to ensure these students are not penalised for the schools’ dereliction.