CAPE and CSEC results under review

Literatures in English and Accounting are among the subjects being reviewed by the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) following the release on Tuesday of preliminary results of the August 2020 sitting of the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) and the Caribbean Advanced Proficicieny Examinations (CAPE).

Instead of the usual detailed report on the performance of this nation’s students in the CAPE and CSEC external examinations, the Ministry of Education of St Vincent and the Grenadines issued a release on Wednesday, noting that the Council was currently engaged in reviewing the results in specific subject disciplines.

And as a result, the detailed report would come once this review was completed.

Maxwell Fergus, dean of the Division of Arts, Sciences and General Studies at the St Vincent and the Grenadines Community College (SVGCC) told SEARCHLIGHT yesterday that the results of CAPE Literatures in English and Accounting were under review because all students in both disciplines returned “Ungraded” results.

It is unclear which CSEC subjects are being reviewed and why.

External examinations for CAPE and CSEC are usually held in the May/June period of each year. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, exams were held in July this year with modifications.

The modified administration of these exams for the award of grades included the administering of Paper 1 (Multiple Choice assessment) and School Based Assessments.

It was also decided that Examinations would be administered via an e-Testing modality in countries that were equipped with the infrastructure to do so. In cases where there were challenges, candidates would be allowed to sit the paper based exams.

“Given what has happened in other parts of the world, we are grateful that we’re able to present results that our stakeholders can be assured that the grades awarded are valid, having gone through the requisite governance, quality assurance processes that ensure that we are able to present the results today,” Wayne Wesley, CXC’s registrar said at the official results release press conference on Tuesday morning.

Wesley said 2020 challenged the Council’s organisational and operational system as well as its capacity for leadership, to inspire confidence and to galvanise the consensus and collaboration needed to advance and overcome the challenges of the pandemic.

The registrar said CXC sought to maintain that no candidate should be disadvantaged and that the integrity of the examination and administration process is preserved to ensure that persons were confident in the results being released.

“I am happy because given what we have gone through and the consensus that we managed to galvanise, we are able to complete the process and allowing for the presentation of grades this morning,” he said.

Results were initially due to be released at 5 pm on Tuesday but minutes before that time, CXC published a notice on its Facebook page indicating that only CAPE and CCSLC results would be available while CSEC results would be released at 8 pm.

A petition was started via change.org, by an individual known only as Kim Harper, to “DEMAND a COMPLETE and THOROUGH review of the 2020 CXC examination results”.

“By signing this petition you are requesting a THOROUGH review of ALL examination papers submitted for grading following the sitting of the 2020 CAPE and CSEC examinations, and are alleging that there has been a mistake of the behalf of the Caribbean Examinations Council in regards to graded results distributed to candidates via the Online Student Portals (as many students believe the grades distributed to not accurately reflect their performance in the exams. Edited 23/9/2020) and request IMMEDIATE reconsideration and review of ALL the results,” the petition read.
According to a regional media entity, the petition amassed 1000 signatures within four hours of being started.
As at 10:37 am yesterday, 12,481 signatures had been collected.

In St Vincent and the Grenadines, 2425 candidates registered for the CSEC examinations. This number includes 856 private candidates and 1569 school candidates.

The number of students who registered for CAPE this year was 572. Of this number, 37 were private candidates and 535 were candidates from the SVGCC.