SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Reg­is­trar of the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tion Coun­cil (CXC) Dr Wayne Wes­ley has con­firmed that the ex­am­i­na­tion body will move to ad­dress thou­sands of grade queries that were re­ceived from stu­dents across the re­gion, with­in the com­ing week.

The an­nounce­ment came from Wes­ley dur­ing a vir­tu­al me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, as CXC delved in­to a draft re­port re­cent­ly com­piled by an in­de­pen­dent re­view team.

“One has to deal with how soon we will treat with the re­view re­quests that would be sub­mit­ted to us…and we re­al­ly have a week turn­around time on some of these re­view re­quests. With­in a week we will be treat­ing with those re­quests,” Wes­ley as­sured.

Al­most 40,000 stu­dents and pri­vate can­di­dates wrote the Ju­ly/Au­gust 2020 CAPE ex­ams while 122,000 en­gaged in CSEC in 20 ter­ri­to­ries in the re­gion.

Chair­man of CXC Prof Sir Hi­lary Beck­les. who touched on some of the find­ings of the re­port dur­ing the con­fer­ence. in­sist­ed that “mi­nori­ties must be heard.”

On the flip side, he said CXC did well in mod­i­fy­ing ex­am strate­gies dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and con­duct­ed its re­mit in a pro­fes­sion­al man­ner.

This comes af­ter last month’s query by stu­dents across the re­gion over their re­spec­tive grades in the CSEC and CAPE ex­am­i­na­tions.

On Sat­ur­day, chair­man of the in­de­pen­dent team Prof Hazel Sim­mons Mc Don­ald pre­sent­ed the re­port to CXC which con­tained 23 rec­om­men­da­tions-one of which is that man­age­ment con­sti­tute a process of re­form and an up­grade of the ecosys­tem in the short to medi­um term.

Beck­les said coun­cil dis­cussed the re­port for three hours on Sat­ur­day and ex­pressed its full sat­is­fac­tion with the qual­i­ty of re­search and in­tegri­ty of the in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

To­day, Beck­les said the coun­cil will meet with all ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ters in the re­gion to dis­cuss the re­port while CXC’s man­age­ment will be­gin the heal­ing process and “to look at what are go­ing to be the changes that would be rec­om­mend­ed.”

He said the pur­pose of CXC is to meet the sat­is­fac­tion of all of its gov­ern­ments.

How­ev­er, he said the re­port showed that com­mu­ni­ca­tions be­tween the var­i­ous el­e­ments of the sys­tems could have been more ef­fec­tive.

“That these mis­un­der­stand­ings con­tributed ul­ti­mate­ly to a high mea­sure of anx­i­ety in re­spect of per­for­mance by stu­dents, teach­ers, par­ents and oth­er stake­hold­ers.”

He said in some in­stances CXC could have re­spond­ed to stu­dents and par­ents with greater alacrity, stat­ing the re­la­tion­ships in the sys­tem must now be made more ef­fi­cient.

With­in CXC’s reg­u­la­to­ry struc­ture, Beck­les said, “There is now a very ur­gent need to ad­dress all of the spe­cif­ic con­cerns raised by stake­hold­ers.”

“It is nec­es­sary for the ecosys­tem to un­der­go an au­dit re­view…that is all of the parts of the ed­u­ca­tion­al sys­tem in which CXC is a crit­i­cal com­po­nent.”

He said in the con­text of re­mote learn­ing, in­ter­net cov­er­age in some Caribbean coun­tries has been poor while COVID-19 cre­at­ed a stress pro­file for teach­ers, par­ents and stu­dents.

“Anx­i­ety about per­for­mance…this has been the first time where we have seen this lev­el of anx­i­ety be­cause of the mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the process­es plus the COVID cul­ture.”

He said CXC has to think about next year and how to move for­ward.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions, Beck­les ad­mit­ted that stu­dents in 20 ter­ri­to­ries ex­pe­ri­enced in­con­sis­ten­cies with their grades which amount­ed to “one per cent or less.”

He said the con­cerns raised with the re­sults this year was greater com­pared to pre­vi­ous years.

“Some of the chal­lenges were sys­temic. When we have a large num­ber of stu­dents or a block of stu­dents with­in a school or mul­ti­ple schools… we have to ex­am­ine what has gone wrong. It is not sim­ply a mat­ter that the stu­dents did not do well as ex­pect­ed,” Beck­les said.

He said in many in­stances there were com­mu­ni­ca­tion chal­lenges with sta­tis­tics and grades that need­ed to be fixed.

Pro­vid­ing fig­ures for those seek­ing re­view queries, Wes­ley said their records showed there were 2,353 CAPE stu­dents with 2,550 be­ing CSEC stu­dents across the re­gion.

“In re­spect of the queries re­ceived this year in re­la­tion to un­grad­ed, it would have been 659. In re­spect of ab­sence and un­grad­ed to­geth­er it would have been 1,572.”

He said the dead­line for can­di­dates and stu­dents to make re­views and queries of their ex­am­i­na­tions has been ex­tend­ed from Oc­to­ber 23 to No­vem­ber 6.

Wes­ley said CXC will al­so re­duce the fees as­so­ci­at­ed with the re­quest for a re­view by 50 per cent.

“If the re­sult in grade re­mains the same the can­di­date will be ad­vised and if the re­sult in grade is in­creased the can­di­date will be ad­vised as well as a full re­fund of the re­view fees.”

He said mea­sures have been out in place for can­di­dates to get an im­me­di­ate re­sponse to the re­view of their grade.

Beck­les in­ter­ject­ed, stat­ing that stu­dents who want to pur­sue ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion have been held in abeyance which they re­gret.

“We in­tend to get the re­views done very, very quick­ly to al­low cer­tain­ty so that we can re­duce the anx­i­ety among the stu­dents, and of course their par­ents and teach­ers to have this mat­ter set­tled as quick­ly as pos­si­ble,” Beck­les said.

Pressed for an­swers re­gard­ing stu­dents who had ob­served on Fri­day changes in their pre­lim­i­nary grades is­sued in the CAPE ex­am­i­na­tions on the Stu­dent Por­tal.

Wes­ley said any great change that has been re­port­ed “it is a for­mal process for us to com­mu­ni­cate that to the lo­cal reg­is­trars to the re­spec­tive min­istries.”

Any great change, Wes­ley should not be “where a grade is de­creased. We will stand by the ini­tial pub­li­ca­tion of grades in that re­gard, giv­en the de­ci­sion to make sure that grades are not re­duced.”

Pressed if CXC will move to scrap SBAs, Wes­ley said it is here to stay.

“We are still giv­ing con­sid­er­a­tion to the SBAs.”