[UPDATED] CXC examinations to begin three weeks later on May 23

The start of Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) examinations has been delayed for three weeks and will now begin on May 23. CEO Dr Wayne Wesley said the decision was reached on Wednesday after an emergency meeting of the organisation’s council.

At a media conference on Wednesday, Wesley said the council arrived at three decisions regarding the regional examinations after deliberation and feedback from regional education ministries.

“A delay in the sitting of the regional examinations by three weeks, which will provide candidates with additional time to prepare for the examinations. Examinations will commence on Monday May 23, 2022, with the last exam on July 1, and results to be released in late August or early September. The details are still being worked out, and will be determined and communicated accordingly.

“Secondly, the extension of submission of school-based assessments (SBAs) from June 30, 2022, by a further two weeks for the submission of both CAPE and CSEC SBAs, and thirdly that the release of broad topics be communicated to the candidates.

“CXC is to share with education ministries, for communication with candidates, the broad topics to be assessed on Paper 2.”

Wesley said the broad topics and timetable would be released within the next two weeks, with the broad topics serving more as prep tools rather than for revision.

He said the council considered presentations from the respective stakeholders who expressed concern about the readiness of students to write the examinations, and that extra time would have been needed for them to be in a better position.

There are 105,078 students registered to take the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate, 25,429 candidates taking the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations, and 4,376 students registered for the Caribbean Certificate of Secondary Level Competence examination.

Wesley said students can opt to defer their examinations up to the day before the scheduled date of the examination. He said the hardship policy would remain in place, where when students experience hardship, once reports are submitted, consideration would be given.

He said if students wanted to modify their SBAs, given the two-week extension, any projects submitted would still be with the local CXC registrar, and students would have the option to recall and modify their projects once the final grade had not been uploaded.

Wesley said CXC would do what it could to facilitate students meeting their matriculation requirements at the earliest possible time.

Director of operations Dr Nicole Manning said all CXC’s 16 participating territories used electronic testing for at least one subject.

“We are working with our territories to improve and increase the participation in the use of the electronic testing during assessment. We have been having significant increases in the use of electronic testing, as much as 80 per cent year on year, so we are looking forward to seeing a similar increase. However, CXC does facilitate registration to use electronic testing as close as possible to the date, so it is a facility that because we are encouraging territories to utilise it, we hope we can have more people registering to do it, and we anticipate that with the extension will see more people doing it that way.”

She said some challenges CXC has faced with implementing the electronic testing were that some territories did not have the necessary equipment and power sources to facilitate the testing in the way CXC has been promoting. She said they were working with stakeholders to advance this.

Responding to questions about students not receiving results from 2021, Manning said systems had been put in place that the situation would not recur in 2022, and she was confident that there would not be a repeat of the situation.

The media conference can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNjZCLztm68&t=13s 

This story was originally published has been adjusted to include additional details. See original post below.

Caribbean Examinations Council CEO Wayne Wesley said the start of the CXC examinations will now take place on May 23, a delay of three weeks.

At a media conference on Wednesday, Wesley said the decision was made after a meeting of the governing board.

He said the date of submission for school-based assessments (SBAs) would be pushed back by two weeks, with the final date being set by the local registrar in each country.

Wesley said broad topics would be prepared and distributed to the education ministries in the various countries within the next two weeks, so they would be distributed to students a week or two before the start of examinations.