Ja­maica's Over­seas Ex­am­i­na­tion Com­mis­sion (OEC) Tues­day said while the Bar­ba­dos-based Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil (CXC) will dis­con­tin­ue cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for cer­tain sub­jects, no de­ci­sion has been tak­en to re­move them from the cur­ricu­lum of sec­ondary schools there.

The cer­ti­fi­ca­tions to be dis­con­tin­ued are agri­cul­tur­al sci­ence (dou­ble award) and me­chan­i­cal en­gi­neer­ing at the Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate and Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am­i­na­tion lev­els; as well as, elec­tri­cal and elec­tron­ic en­gi­neer­ing, and tech­nol­o­gy and green en­gi­neer­ing.

“The OEC re­grets this im­petu­os­i­ty and in­forms that though CXC has pro­vid­ed an ad­vi­so­ry on the dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of the afore­men­tioned sub­jects, a de­ci­sion to re­move them from the Ja­maican sec­ondary schools’ cur­ricu­lum has not yet been tak­en,” the OEC said in a state­ment.

The OEC said that that CXC has ad­vised that ter­ri­to­ries or groups of ter­ri­to­ries across the Caribbean re­gion may de­cide to main­tain the sub­jects as a part of the suite of cer­ti­fi­ca­tion op­tions for ter­mi­nal ex­ams, but such ter­ri­to­ries will be al­lowed to do so un­der cer­tain con­di­tions.

The OEC said that the com­mu­ni­ca­tion from CXC’s of­fice was sent to the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and Youth, Dr Kasan Troupe and copied to the OEC for in­for­ma­tion pur­pos­es.

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and Youth will re­port­ed­ly be meet­ing with stake­hold­ers ahead of the new aca­d­e­m­ic year and will “en­sure a con­sen­sus in the best in­ter­est of the na­tion’s youth”.

Mean­while, the OEC has now set ear­ly June as the date for the fi­nal pay­ment to teach­ers who marked school-based as­sess­ments (SBA) in 2022.

Last week Ja­maica Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (JTA) Pres­i­dent Leighton John­son said that sev­er­al teach­ers who had marked SBAs in 2022 were yet to be paid de­spite a promise from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion that fi­nal pay­ments would be made by April.

In a re­lease on Mon­day the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion said it has tasked the OEC with dis­burs­ing the retroac­tive pay­ments

“The OEC ac­knowl­edges the de­lays in these pay­ments and as­sures teach­ers, schools, and stake­hold­ers that the is­sue is be­ing ad­dressed with ut­most pri­or­i­ty. We are com­mit­ted to re­solv­ing this mat­ter prompt­ly and will keep the pub­lic in­formed of any sig­nif­i­cant up­dates,” the re­lease said. —KINGSTON, Ja­maica (CMC)