Sev­er­al stu­dents of St. Au­gus­tine Girls' High school (SAGHS) cur­rent­ly are weigh­ing their le­gal op­tions fol­low­ing what they de­scribe as “shock­ing” re­sults in the Caribbean Stud­ies ex­ams.

A re­lease is­sued by a stu­dent speak­ing on be­half of con­cerned col­leagues states:

“The Caribbean Stud­ies re­sults came as shock to our school this year as all of the stu­dents ob­tained a grade C in one of the pro­files re­flect­ing our SBA mark. This would di­rect­ly af­fect schol­ar­ships… CXC is not re­spond­ing to our school and re­fus­es to pro­vide a sim­ple ex­pla­na­tion for their ac­tions de­spite the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion con­tact­ing them. CXC said that they would look in­to the mat­ter how­ev­er these are all emp­ty promis­es as noth­ing was done…”  

The stu­dents say they are con­cerned they are be­ing dis­en­fran­chised when it comes to schol­ar­ships.

Fol­low­ing is the full text of the state­ment is­sued by the stu­dent on be­half of the con­cerned group…

WE NEED AN AN­SWER, CXC

Caribbean Stud­ies is stud­ied at the CAPE Unit 2 lev­el at SAGHS. The re­sults are list­ed in three pro­files and all nine­ty stu­dents of SAGHS re­ceived a grade C in the third pro­file which is most­ly af­fect­ed by the School Based As­sess­ment (SBA) mark. The SBAs are mod­er­at­ed by CXC, how­ev­er, the prospect of every stu­dent's SBA be­ing of the same qual­i­ty such that a grade C was al­lot­ted to every­one is im­pos­si­ble. This grade C would di­rect­ly im­pact el­i­gi­bil­i­ty for schol­ar­ships.

The is­sue was aired on the news where the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion in­formed the me­dia that CXC was con­tact­ed and said that they would in­ves­ti­gate the sit­u­a­tion. These were emp­ty promis­es as noth­ing was ever done. CXC's un­re­spon­sive­ness begs the ques­tion as to whether this ac­tion was de­lib­er­ate to re­duce the num­ber of schol­ar­ships.

Weird­ly enough, our school was down­grad­ed in this sub­ject last year as well. SAGHS has nev­er been down­grad­ed in Caribbean Stud­ies, but sud­den­ly last year when the re­duc­tion in schol­ar­ships was an­nounced, they start­ed down­grad­ing us? The stu­dents will not be duped in­to be­liev­ing that this down­grade was any­where near fair or de­serv­ing. The stu­dents are fed up and have lost all faith in CXC, who are ac­count­able to no one. Per­haps some­thing big­ger is at play but we will not sit back and al­low it to hap­pen. Le­gal ac­tion is on its way. The stu­dents will fight for jus­tice and our rights be­cause we are the fu­ture of this coun­try. CXC must ac­count.