Despite a drop in the number of persons writing the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) Examination, there has been an increase in the number of subjects written by each student.
According to Director of operations at the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC), Stephen Savory, this is because “more persons are recognizing that they need to be able to have at least four or five subjects at CSEC level to move on to tertiary education and therefore more candidates are attempting more exams as the years progress.”
The 2016 CSEC results were officially released today in Anguilla and streamed live on the Caribbean Examinations Council’s (CXC’s) website.
It was noted that once again the number of female students writing the exams outnumbered the males with a 58:42 percent ratio.
55, 130 males wrote the exam while 77, 544 females wrote the exam.
Giving an analysis of the results across the region, Glenroy Cumberbatch from Barbados who is a Registrar at CXC disclosed that the region had an overall pass rate with grades one to three of 64%.
He noted that there was a drop in the performance in Mathematics when compared to 2015. Overall performance in Mathematics saw a 13% decrease. Candidates recorded a 44% pass rate in Maths this year as opposed to 57% in 2015.
Cumberbatch noted that to solve this problem, the literacy of students entering the secondary school system needs to be improved. This conclusion was arrived at, after looking at the CPEA (Caribbean Primary Exit Assessment).
On the other hand, English Language saw an improvement from 60% in 2015 to 67 in 2016.
The Registrar highlighted that there has been a general decline in the Science subjects over the past two years; something that is a concern for the regional body, given the importance of Science in the modern society.
“Sciences are far too important to push us beyond where we are for us to have a continual decline, so we really need to examine what it is” he noted.
In this regard, CXC is linking up with CARICOM and UWI to conduct a study to understand why there has been a decline.
Also seeing a decline was Information Technology which moved from 88% in 2015 to 78% in 2016.
Speaking about the performance in Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE), the region attained a success rate of 90%.
While there has been an overall decline in the performance in Accounting Unit 01, there has been an improvement in Agriculture Science results. Mathematics remained fairly constant according to Cumberbatch.
Two compulsory subjects, Caribbean Studies and Communicatino Studies both dropped by one percent.
Caribbean Studies moved from 96%v overall pass rate in 2015 to 97% in 2016 while Communication Studies moved from 98% in 2015 to 97% in 2016.
CAPE results will be released tonight at 10pm while CSEC results will be available online on August 16.
