Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand says it is likely that the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) and the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE) 2020 results will be announced on Wednesday.
She noted that Guyana has almost completed its lengthy review process with the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) following discrepancies with the exams last year.
“We are presently compiling data that should allow us to make some announcements tomorrow [Wednesday],” the minister told reporters at the sidelines of an event on Tuesday.
Manickchand further explained that the review process for CSEC is 96 per cent complete with approximately 120 outstanding results, while the review for CAPE is at 93 per cent with 33 outstanding results.
According to the minister, if any student, who is yet to receive their results, only wrote 12 subjects, then the ministry will announce the student or students with the most grade ones. However, Manickchand said, “if there is a student with 20 ones waiting for a review of two subjects, we can’t make an announcement.”
The CXC had promised to have all reviews completed by the end of January 2021, but this did not happen due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The problem is all of this is happening in Barbados and Barbados is currently under a COVID-19 lockdown so CXC had promised that they would finish the review process by January 2021 and that didn’t happen and now that they are in lockdown, it is uncertain when they would finish,” Manickchand stated.
Meanwhile, Manickchand said that Guyanese students are prepared to write this year’s exams; however, CXC announced that students are not required to write the exams this year if they do not feel prepared. This offer is not concrete, but according to Manickchand, CXC stated that the students can write the exams next year using the same School Based Assessment (SBAs) done this year.
“CXC hopes to say to us as the Caribbean that they are going to allow students who don’t feel comfortable writing this year to write next year and use the same SBAs,” Manickchand said.
The problem with this Manickchand explained is that CXC only offers certain subjects in January. Meanwhile, a meeting with CXC and the Council for Human and Social Development (COHSOD) is set for February 28 where all these concerns are going to be addressed and hopefully decisions on how and when the exams can be written will be finalised.
As it relates to Guyanese students, a strong monitoring process is ongoing to ensure compliance with SBAs and preparation for the exams.
“Last year, we had a bit of a disaster in how CXC was managed in terms of SBAs and we had a whole outcry when the SBAs came back,” the Education Minister reminded.
An investigation later found out that a lot of schools did not submit SBAs on time or SBAs with adequate information while some did not even submit any at all.
“We had three schools that did not submit SBAs at all and the kids did it, so we have to be very careful with monitoring schools and every single centre that is writing CXC constantly to make sure the students are finishing their SBAs.”
In the meantime, the ministry is still in negotiations with CXC not to punish these students for something they did not do and if the response from CXC is not favourable, the minister said the schools will be named.
