An­na-Lisa Paul

The Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil (CXC) is ex­pect­ed to re­spond to­day to a unan­i­mous re­quest by re­gion­al Min­is­ters of Ed­u­ca­tion for a waiv­er of ex­am­i­na­tion re­view fees.

The re­quest was made Mon­day as stu­dents and teach­ers across the re­gion have queried re­sults of this year’s Caribbean Sec­ondary En­trance Cer­tifi­cate (CSEC) and Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am (CAPE).

The min­is­ter mak­ing the re­quest were from T&T, Ja­maica, Bar­ba­dos, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, and Guyana.

Fol­low­ing a three-hour vir­tu­al me­dia brief­ing host­ed by CXC on Sun­day, Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley an­nounced that her Gov­ern­ment would foot the re­view bill of all Bar­ba­di­an stu­dents who had made such re­quests.

CXC’s Reg­is­trar Dr Wayne Wes­ley had an­nounced a 50 per cent re­duc­tion in re­view fees, which is cus­tom­ar­i­ly US$30 per re­view, bring­ing it down to US$15 per re­view.

Dur­ing a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing on Sun­day night, Mot­t­ley com­mu­ni­cat­ed her dis­plea­sure over the con­tin­u­ing saga which has af­fect­ed hun­dreds of thou­sands of stu­dents across the re­gion.

She said some par­ents could not af­ford to pay the price for the re­view.

Gads­by-Dol­ly said the just like Bar­ba­dos, T&T al­so made a sim­i­lar of­fer to cov­er the cost of the re­views for lo­cal stu­dents.

In a What­sApp re­sponse, she said, “On Mon­day, T&T made the de­ci­sion to pay. How­ev­er, at Mon­day’s meet­ing with CXC, the Min­is­ters of Ed­u­ca­tion present re­quest­ed that CXC con­sid­er a to­tal waiv­er for all stu­dents, not just from the ter­ri­to­ries that could make such pay­ments.”

In­di­cat­ing their sup­port for a waiv­er of all fees, Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent An­to­nia Tekah-De Fre­itas yes­ter­day ra­tio­nal­ized that CXC had been paid to pro­vide three ex­am com­po­nents but that on­ly two com­po­nents had been ad­min­is­tered fol­low­ing changes to the ex­am for­mat as a re­sult of the COVID-19 virus.

She ex­plained, “A re­view is when you go through the pa­pers and make sure all items are marked and all those marks tal­lied. A re-mark­ing is when you ac­tu­al­ly do the pa­per over.”

“TTUTA would def­i­nite­ly sup­port the call for a waiv­er be­cause one of the points that re­gion­al teach­ers’ unions made to the Reg­is­trar of CXC a cou­ple weeks ago, was that stu­dents paid for a cer­tain amount of pa­pers to be done and marked and that was not done. They on­ly did two pa­pers - the Pa­per 1 and the School-Based As­sess­ments.”

She said CXC should now ab­sorb the as­so­ci­at­ed costs for a re­view.

An­gry and frus­trat­ed over the per­ceived lack of ac­tion by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, a small group of par­ents gath­ered out­side the Red House at Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain on Mon­day, call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to take a de­ci­sive stance re­gard­ing the fu­tures of their chil­dren which re­mains hang­ing in the bal­ance.