CSEC = calamity of secondary examinations during covid19

DARCELLE DOODNATH

A decision coming out of the first emergency virtual meeting of the Council for Human and Social Development, held on May 8, has decreed that students writing the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC), Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE) and Caribbean Certificate of Secondary Level Competence (CCLSC) will be required to sit their examinations in July.

Regional stakeholders determined that students would experience a modified examination process, and receive grades based on the administration of the Paper 1 (multiple choice) and the school based assessment (SBA) at the CSEC level or internal assessment (IA) at the CAPE level.

Based on each territory’s technological capacity and infrastructure, Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) registrar Dr Wayne Wesley explained that either the e-testing or paper-testing modality would be applied, all while preserving the integrity of the examination.

The go-ahead announcement was met with significant opposition. The Caribbean Union of Teachers vehemently objected to CXC examinations any time before September, citing a lack of preparedness on the part of governments in the region for the planned reopening of schools. The Barbados Union of Teachers compared the decision to more of a “business strategy” rather than a genuine approach in the best interests of students dealing with the extraordinary impacts of the covid19 pandemic in the region.

The Guyana Teachers’ Union asserted that the strategy is disadvantageous to everyone apart from CXC, emphasising the side of profitability in CXC’s favour. Minister Karl Samuda of Jamaica, with responsibility for education, youth and information, advised that Jamaica would not be able to hold examinations in July and therefore could not endorse the date, taking into consideration the challenges faced by local students with little or no access to the Internet to facilitate remote learning. And the Jamaica Teachers’ Association said CXC gets a failing grade for its decision, calling it a reckless move at the expense of children’s health.

The TT Unified Teachers’ Association (TTUTA) is also against the CSEC and CAPE examinations in July, proposing instead that the examinations be administered no less than four weeks after the reopening of school. Discussions arising out of a virtual general council meeting on May 15 highlighted the loss of valuable contact time with students since national school closures in March, making it difficult for teachers to facilitate the completion of SBAs and IAs.

Members indicated that they were unable to give proper feedback to students electronically due to lack of devices or connectivity issues, delaying indefinitely the task of uploading official marks. (Last Friday in Parliament, Education Minister Anthony Garcia upheld CXC’s position, saying it was “a decision of the regional ministers of education. Any change can only be effected if the ministers of education collectively decide on any change.”)

As for the modified format, since the announcement was made, local educators have vociferously expressed their concerns over the changes, in particular the exclusion of the Paper 2, which is traditionally given prioritised weighting and covers higher-order thinking through structured question items and essays. Some educators argue that multiple choice papers contain repeated questions to which students may have unequal access, without treating the full scope of the syllabus. Another made the point that SBA and IA projects can be plagiarised or heavily influenced by teacher involvement, rendering these forms of assessment inadequate to reliably evaluate student performance.

Interestingly, for matriculation to the University of the West Indies, CAPE Unit 1 grades, in addition to previous results, were deemed sufficient. However, for students vying for foreign university places, their performance in a multiple choice examination and a project will ultimately determine their matriculation and their eligibility for scholarships.

Top US universities like Princeton, Yale and Brown have confirmed that educational disruptions due to covid19 will not negatively affect chances of admission, while Harvard University reiterates that standardised testing is only one of the many factors considered in the application process, reassuring prospective students that if they are prevented from taking tests in any form due to covid19, their applications will still be reviewed as was done in the past in other exceptional circumstances.

In the UK, this year’s GCSEs, AS and A-levels were all cancelled due to the coronavirus outbreak and students were advised that calculated grades based on a broad range of evidence (assessments by schools and colleges of grades that students would have been likely to attain if examinations ran as scheduled and their prior attainment) would be released in the summer so they could be used for progression to higher education.

While CXC maintains that health and safety is its number one priority in the provision of education during the covid19 crisis, it remains to be seen the definitive strategies for implementation of the examination process in alignment with the public health policies of each member country and their unique responses to the current situation.

For example, with Spanish, French and Portuguese oral examinations scheduled to begin as early as June 29, modern foreign language teachers must question, quite understandably, how exactly these examinations will be conducted. Traditionally, the exam is a one-on-one experience, with the examiner (an external teacher) distributing sheets of paper to the student which contain prompts for them to read and respond to situations, and then the pair engages in a theme-based conversation. The student and the examiner are usually in a room together, sitting in close proximity to allow for easy listening and responding.

For students in TT, examinations in July will not be done online but rather administered on paper in schools. From an industrial relations perspective, health and safety protocols must therefore be the highest priority in discussions with the teachers’ union, and policies thoroughly outlined so that a safe working environment is established for teachers, examiners, invigilators, supervisors and other employees involved in the examination machinery.

But, in the unprecedented circumstances of carrying out examinations during a global pandemic, to what extent will the governing bodies guarantee the safety of candidates? Are we prepared like Taiwan to conduct temperature checks and erect plastic tabletop desk partitions as an added security measure? Or ventilate classrooms and mandate the wearing of masks like Japan? Or will we place desks six feet apart and stagger student arrivals like Denmark and Germany?

After such a worrisome period of uncertainty, students across the region must now endure the mental pressure of preparing to write high-stakes examinations, which will be conducted in an environment that undoubtedly increases their risk of exposure to covid19, with the unsettling notion that their performance is dictated by a flawed and grossly inadequate system of testing.

Regardless of the measures put in place to ensure social distancing, proper sanitisation and other precautionary measures, students and teachers alike will be hesitant to re-enter the classroom, even if it is to write/administer examinations deemed so exigent that they could not have been delayed until schools are given the authorisation to officially re-open, under properly implemented protocols for the health and safety of all.

Darcelle Doodnath is an educator specialising in modern foreign language pedagogy. She holds a postgraduate diploma in education from the University of the West Indies, a diploma in methodologies of teaching Spanish as a second language from Universidad de Chile and an undergraduate degree in Hispanic language and linguistics from Brown University.