SVG’s CXC performance report delayed by ‘Ungraded’ queries

For the third consecutive year, education officials in St Vincent and the Grenadines have had to launch queries with the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) in regards to results of the May/June examinations.

In 2023, an unusually high number of Ungraded scores returned by the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC), prompted the Ministry of Education to lodge queries with the regional examination body and a similar situation has occurred again this year.

This was revealed by Chief Education Officer, Kay Martin-Jack during the Principals’ Meeting at the UWI Open Campus in Kingstown on Wednesday August 28, 2024.

CXC officially released results on Tuesday, August 20, at a ceremony in Dominica. However SVG is yet to release the country performance report. Martin-Jack said the number of Ungraded results raised red flags for the Ministry.

“We recognized that at this time we have not done a release as it relates to St Vincent and its performance. This is due to the fact that a number of the disciplines at various centers would have received ungraded straight across the centre.

CXC states that ‘Ungraded’ indicates that the scores for one component of the examination, usually the School Based or Internal Assessment, was not submitted on behalf of the candidate. However Martin-Jack said this could not have been the case.

“We recognize that could not have been possible based on what would have been submitted.”

Martin-Jack said the situation is not unique to St Vincent and the Grenadines, and the Education Ministry will await the completion of the query before releasing the official report.

“We are still waiting on CXC to return the grades and they have begun working. So as soon as we get the results they would be released to the schools then we can collate the release to know the performance. We don’t want to put out something so we will just hold a little bit and give them some time. We are not the only country in that situation.”

CXC announced that there was a regional decline of the overall pass rate for both the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE), and the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC). For CSEC, there was an overall performance of 69 per cent and the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Education, Myccle Burke, in his remarks revealed that preliminary results show SVG results are higher than the regional average.

He said despite this, data shows a downward trend for results, which highlights that the local education system is being impacted by climate events, disasters and other global issues.

“But we see annually a downward trend in performance and we see that the education system is being significantly impacted by what is happening regionally, globally and what is happening by way of disasters and hurricanes.”

Due to the unavailability of the Ministry official leading the examination query, SEARCHLIGHT was unable to ascertain the specific number of candidates who received Ungraded results.