…English A, sciences, business subjects see increased pass rates
…CAPE also returned satisfactory results

GUYANA has recorded improved performances in 21 subject areas with standout grades in 13 subject areas at this year’s Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations.

Education Minister Dr Nicolette Henry has deemed Guyana’s performance the best ever. At the same time, there was an increase in Grade One and Two passes recorded for Guyanese students who sat the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations (CAPE) as the overall performances were deemed satisfactory. This year, a total of 11,467 candidates wrote the CSEC regional examinations.

On Wednesday, during her announcement of the 2019 results of the two regional examinations set by the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC), that for the CSEC subjects, Minister Henry noted improved performances were recorded in several subject areas including the sciences, English A, the business subjects and the modern languages.

Minister Henry, who made the announcement at the National Centre for Education Research and Development (NCERD) complex in Kingston, said that students attained passes of 90 per cent and over in 13 subject areas. Those subject areas included Agricultural Science, Religious Education, and Information Technology.

English and Mathematics are two of the more important subject areas in the school’s curriculum and according to Minister Henry, a recorded pass rate of 77 per cent in English A was recorded as against 67 per cent for 2018. The pass rate for Mathematics remained constant at 43 per cent for this year when compared to last year.

In the sciences, there were improvements in Grades One to Three passes. In Biology, passes increased from 64 per cent in 2018 to 77 per cent this year and in Chemistry, a recorded pass rate of 62 per cent was noted as compared to 56.4 per cent in 2018. In Physics there was an increase from 66.2 per cent recorded in 2018 against 70 per cent this year.

In the business subjects, Principle of Accounts was the highest jumper, with a recorded pass rate of 83 per cent this year against 74.4 per cent last year. High performances were also recorded in the Humanities and Expressive Arts subject areas with Geography recording an increase from 72.1 per cent last year against 76.3 per cent this year.

In the modern languages, passes in the Portuguese subject area increased from 72 per cent to 81 per cent while an increase from 64.4 per cent to 68.3 per cent was recorded for Spanish.

On the flip side, Minister Henry noted that students performed better last year in a few subject areas. These included Caribbean History, Economics and English B. Those subject areas saw minimal declines in the pass rate. In terms of the performances at the CAPE examination, candidates obtained 100 per cent pass rates in 31 units including Agricultural Science Unit Two, Environmental Science Unit One, Sociology Unit One and Physics Unit Two among others.

A total of 880 Guyanese students wrote the CAPE examinations and Minister Henry said that this year , Mathematics remained consistent with 83.85 per cent grades one to five passes. Of note, was the performance of students from the Christianburg/Wismar Secondary School which offered four units for CAPE for the first time with a pass rate of 92 per cent. While Queen’s College students topped the list of performances this year, Minister Henry said that there were increases in the pass rates at several other schools including the Bishops’ High School, New Amsterdam Secondary, St Joseph’s High and Mackenzie High.