-CAPE results received,full disclosure by Friday

GUYANA is still awaiting the results for the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) which the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) had indicated, would have been made available to all ministries by Monday last.

Chief Education Officer (CEO), Marcel Hutson, confirmed on Tuesday, via phone, that the Education Ministry was not in receipt of all the results. “All the results are not in as yet. The results for CAPE [Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination] are in, but all will be made available by Friday,” the CEO told this publication. He was unable to explain why the ministry had not received the CSEC results.

However, examination regulatory body indicated on its website a few days ago that the results would have been made available to Education Ministries across the region, but that they would not be available to candidates until Friday.

“For candidates who wrote CXC examinations in May/June this year, the anxious wait for their results is almost over. That’s because results for all examinations will be released on Monday 14 August to Ministries of Education. The results will be available to candidates online at http://results.cxc.org and on the CXC Connect Mobile App on Friday 18 August” the post read.

However, CXC Registrar, Glenroy Cumberbatch, has announced that even though there has been a decrease in the number of candidates this year, subject entries have increased.

“Therefore, it means that instead of a candidate doing three subjects on average, they are doing four. To get a job, get into Universities, Community Colleges, etcetera, the average subjects needed are about five,” Cumberbatch said at a press conference on Monday at the CXC headquarters in Barbados.

Further, Cumberbatch said that “We [CXC] recognise that there is a falling number of persons over 17 years who are writing our examinations.” He said that for that purpose, there has been a lot of emphasis on the out-of-school population.

“When we look at stats for last year, the numbers in the schools seem to be steady even with falling populations in the region. However, there used to [be] a fairly large number of persons who were out of school, and who were seeking to better their qualifications – they would either do something on their own and attend an evening institute to try to improve their number of subjects. We are targeting that group of persons” the Registrar said.

He said that CXC has been looking to work with institutions to encourage an increase in enrolment capturing that population, since the potential for income is significantly diminished if an individual possesses less than five CSEC subjects.

Meanwhile, the Barbados Advocate reported on Tuesday that overall CAPE results in the region showed 92 per cent of the candidates receiving Grades one to five in 2017, compared to 90 per cent that received Grades One to Five in 2016. As for the CSEC results 64 per cent of persons received acceptable Grades One to Three; the same figure as last year. Those statistics were given by Cumberbatch at the press conference.