—CXC offers students the opportunity to defer examinations

IN light of discrepancies which were recorded following the sitting of the 2020 Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations, the Ministry of Education has started monitoring the progress of school-based assessments (SBAs), countrywide.
In addressing the issue on Thursday, Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand, said that the ministry has started gathering information on how far along students are with the completion of their SBAs. “The deadline is way off, but Guyana’s ministry is monitoring schools and students individually across the country, to try to make sure we know what each student is doing, what they should’ve been doing, how much is finished, how much is outstanding, to make sure we can catch up any slack that we see.
“The ministry is compiling reports about what each and every student is doing. We want to make sure we don’t end up in the disaster we were in 2020, which is until CXC [Caribbean Examination Council] gives result we realise teachers haven’t handed in the documents,” Manickchand related.

In 2020, several students in Guyana had their grades affected by the lack of proper submissions of the SBA component of their CXC exams. The students received ungraded results, but those were later rectified and the students were issued their grades. Just over 7,000 Guyanese public-school students are scheduled to write the 2021 CSEC exams, while a number of students are also scheduled to write the 2021 Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE); both are being administered by CXC. The 2021 examinations are scheduled to be written from June 14 to July 16. Unlike 2020, when students were required to write just one paper because of the pervasive COVID-19 pandemic, the rules have been adjusted to reintroduce the ‘Paper Two’ component of the examinations. The two papers will be supplemented by the SBAs. Considering the fact that COVID-19 is still prevalent, the examination council has sought to make work easier by reducing the requirements for SBAs by as much as 50 per cent for some subjects, and has also undertaken to share the broad topics being assessed in the second paper of the examination. Some of the new measures have already been implemented, while others will be done before the commencement of the examinations.

Aside from those adjustments, CXC is also offering students the option of writing their examinations in January or June, 2022. For the first time too, CXC will be accepting SBAs in January, 2022, for candidates who are deferring their examinations. Students will also be able to keep their SBAs scores, submit a new SBA, or wait until their deferred sitting to submit their SBA. Students opting for the deferral have until May 1, 2020, to apply. “The granting of the deferral will be managed by the principal, for in-school candidates, and by the CXC Local Registrar, for private candidates. There will be no fee charged for the deferral of examinations,” CXC noted. In addition to introducing those measures because of COVID-19, the examination council is also considering the case of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, where volcano, “La Soufrière,” has erupted. “CXC stands in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in St Vincent and the Grenadines at this time, and all our stakeholders across the region affected by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, CXC stands ready to listen and to engage in dialogue with our critical stakeholders across the education landscape,” CXC said in a recent statement.