Gadsby-Dolly: We will address CSEC/CAPE concerns

Minister of Education Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly says the ministry will address the concerns of students who have joined their regional counterparts in an online petition querying their grades in the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) and Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE).

In the meantime, she is advising students and schools to use the established protocols in making the necessary queries.

Since the results were released on Wednesday, there have been mounting calls from students in several Caricom territories for the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) to urgently review the results.

This has resulted in a regional online petition which has already received an estimated 12,000 signatures.

A story in News Source, Guyana, on Wednesday said several parents and students have been voicing their concerns about the accuracy of the results.

The publication also referred to an interview with Guyana CSEC mathematics teacher Leon Burton who questioned how an entire examination centre could receive ungraded results.

Burton was quoted as saying, “The students are crying, the teachers are crying, even I am crying.”

Several islands, including Barbados, St Lucia and Jamaica, have also called on CXC to review the results.

In a statement on Thursday, Gadsby-Dolly said she has personally spoken to CXC on the matter.

“It is causing distress, which is regrettable, especially for the students involved who are already stressed in this year of the pandemic.

“However, it is necessary to balance the desire for our students to be fairly treated with recognition of the fact that it is critical for queries of this nature to be dealt with through approved and well-defined channels if the integrity of the body that the majority of citizens in the Caribbean region use for certification is to be maintained. Certainly, many persons can and will sign an online petition once they disagree with an assigned grade.”

Gadsby-Dolly noted, in TT over 23,000 wrote the CXC exams while over 60,000 sat the exam in Jamaica.

She said this equates to over 300,000 subject entries from these two countries.

Gadsby-Dolly said the 12,000 signatures on the online petition “can be understood contextually.

“Though no institution can reasonably use that as a basis for review of all grades, it does, however, raise awareness of the matter and indicates to CXC that this issue must be addressed to put to rest troubling questions and concerns that are shared across the region.”

On the issue of SBA scores, the minister said these are scored by individual class teachers and submitted to CXC for moderation.

She said this means that what was submitted by the school may not be the actual score recorded by CXC for the student and used to determine their overall grade.

Gadsby-Dolly said CXC is expected to respond to the issue.

“And we, in T&T, eagerly await their elucidation of the complex issues surrounding this matter, even as we advise schools and individuals to follow the established procedures to make the necessary queries.”

She said the ministry will take all required steps to ensure this issue is adequately addressed.

And Tabaquite MP Anita Haynes is calling on Gadsby-Dolly to initiate an urgent query into the grading discrepancies noted in CAPE results.

“Concerned students, parents, teachers and school administrators have reached out to me to highlight the fact that a significant number of students have received grades that did not match their profiles, that is, students with all As in their profile received grades (five) and (six)," said Haynes in a statement.

Haynes added, “In some instances, entire classes received ‘ungraded’ and several others received grades not consistent with their historical performances. Students with near-perfect internal assessments received grades (four) and (five)."

Haynes said while it is customary to receive reports of these irregularities from a few students, “the numbers have been significantly higher this year, with hundreds of reports of these irregularities.”

She said Gadsby-Dolly and Minister in the Ministry of Education Lisa Morris-Julian need to take this issue seriously.

Haynes said the matter is further frustrating CAPE Unit 1 students, who are already navigating the pressures of applying to universities across the world.

She said CAPE Unit 2 students who have already received provisional acceptance from some universities, are now slapped with grades four, five and ungraded.

She said this places their future “into a measure of uncertainty.”

Haynes added, “To add insult to injury, students and parents are now being forced to find EC$60 to file a reassessment for each subject area.”

She said this should be revised based on the current situation.

“I am calling on the Minister of Education and the Chief Education Officer to immediately demand a response from the Caribbean Examination Council to explain the inconsistencies in the results.”