– CXC re-moderating SBAs, principal confident of no discrepancies
By Vishani Ragobeer
STUDENTS of Queen’s College, who were previously ungraded for Religious Education and Theatre Arts, recently received grades after the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) was engaged, according to the school’s Principal, Jackie Benn-Ralph.
In September, students and teachers of this school raised several concerns about the alleged poor grading for students at the 2020 Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) and Caribbean Advanced Proficiency (CAPE) examinations. Several schools raised similar concerns and since then, an independent review team was crafted to examine those concerns.
On Monday, however, the principal told reporters that she is yet to be updated on the concerns of the poor grades received in many other subject areas. She highlighted that the CXC requested the students’ lab books for remoderation. These lab books are a compilation of lab reports done on several topics and are submitted as the School-Based Assessments (SBAs).
“They’re expected to re-moderate those laboratory reports that the students submitted,” Benn-Ralph said, reminding that some of these books were already moderated. She also added, “We have difficulties with the CAPE subjects, so they’re looking at those particular areas, especially the sciences they’re looking at.”
The CXC found that there were some discrepancies with the SBAs once they began re-moderating all of the SBAs. Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand, highlighted that the discovery that grades were not submitted by some public schools caused the ministry to consider sanctioning the teachers responsible.
Benn-Ralph, however, said, “I don’t think there are discrepancies here in particular because I am certain that our teachers knew exactly what was expected of them.”
She related that when the CXC spoke of discrepancies, they were probably speaking in a more general sense. Students of Queen’s College are usually some of the country’s top students when the CXC results for the CSEC and CAPE examinations are announced.
Given the fact that the discrepancies are being reviewed, the Education Ministry has not yet announced which students have gotten the most Grade One passes as yet. These students with the most Grade One passes are usually considered to be the nation’s top performers, though a period permitting reviews is given. Usually, as well, after the Ministry’s announcement of the results and that review period, the CXC would recognise the regional top performers.
“We thought it prudent this year for us to wait until CXC makes the announcement about who got what in which country, about who topped and those kinds of things,” Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand, highlighted recently.
