GUYANA has thus far received improved grades for just over 6,700 or 9.4 per cent of the grades issued for the 2020 Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) and 450 or 10.4 per cent of the grades issued for the 2020 Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations (CAPE).

Meanwhile, the regional examinations body, the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC), has suspended printing of the July/August 2020 candidates’ certificates due to a COVID-19 lockdown being enforced in Barbados, where the council’s headquarters is located. The suspension is expected to persist until the restrictions in Barbados are lifted.

“Candidates that [sic] have urgent requests can submit a request for a printed preliminary slip from CXC’s Western Zone Office in Jamaica. That request can be emailed to cxcwzo@cxc.org,” the Ministry of Education (MoE) said in a press release issued on Monday.

The release noted that the ministry is still awaiting response on 128 review requests for CSEC and 33 review requests from CAPE. It is unsure at this time as to when the remaining reviews will be completed, as CXC had originally projected completing the exercise by January 31, but has since missed the deadline, a situation exacerbated by the lockdown in Barbados.

Following the preliminary release of CXC 2020 exam results, the body had received unprecedented backlash from several Caribbean nations over the grades issued. Students had complained of lower than satisfactory grades, while there was also a high number of ungraded results.

Many of the ungraded results have since received grades, while Guyana had requested reviews of 1,258 subject grades issued for CSEC and 526 subject grades issued for CAPE. Of the reviews requested for CSEC, improved grades were awarded to 456 reviews, while for CAPE, the reviews yielded 145 improved grades.
However, in addition to the review requests, CXC considered a number of “borderline cases” for which additional reviews were conducted. “Borderline cases” are those instances where a student missed out on advancing up a grade level by a slim margin.

From these “borderline cases” reviewed, a further 6,251 grades for CSEC were improved, bringing the total grades changed for CSEC to 6,707. A total of 12,009 students wrote 70,710 subjects across 35 different subjects at the 2020 CSEC examinations.
For CAPE, the “borderline reviews” yielded an additional 311 improved grade changes with a total of 456 grades being changed for Guyana. A total of 853 students wrote 4,393 subjects across 66 units at the 2020 CAPE examinations