THE commencement of the 2022 Caribbean Secondary Examinations Certificate (CSEC) and Caribbean Advance Proficiency Examinations (CAPE), administered by the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC), has been pushed back by three weeks and will now commence on May 23.

Results for those exams, according to CXC, are estimated to be released by late August to early September.

CXC Registrar, Dr. Wayne Wesley, on Wednesday, said that the decision to push back the examinations was taken as a means of affording the students some “extra time” to better prepare for the imminent assessments.
This decision followed a meeting earlier on Wednesday between members of the CXC Schools Examinations Committee and CXC Council, which comprise representatives from all of the various countries where the exam is administered.

“After careful consideration and deliberations of all the pertinent issues, council agreed that the revised strategy will be a delay in the sitting of the regional examinations by three weeks; this will provide candidates with additional time to prepare for the examinations,” Dr. Wesley said during a virtual press briefing on Wednesday.

He further said: “Council would’ve considered all the presentation from the respective stakeholders who would’ve expressed concerns of readiness of students and that extra time would be needed for them to be in a better position to perform well during those examinations.”

Some 105,078 candidates are registered to write the 2022 CSEC, while another 25,429 candidates will be writing the 2022 CAPE, across the 16 Caribbean territories where the examinations will be administered.
This year, the CXC annual examinations will return to its original May/June period, following disruptions over the past two years due to the COVID-19.

It was reported, however, that while most countries are beginning to return to normal functioning, some stakeholders are still feeling the effects of COVID-19. This was one of the main reasons that influenced the decision to push back the examinations.

“CXC stands in solidarity with the regional and the international community, as we grapple with the impact of COVID-19 on our way of life. The Council recognises the impact of COVID-19 on the education system in general and more specifically on the schedule of CXCs regional exams,” Dr. Wesley said.

CXC had initially released a timetable which stated that the written exams will start on May 2, preceded by the oral exams for the foreign subjects which were scheduled to begin on April 12. A new timetable will be available soon.

Aside from the extension of the commencement of examinations, an additional two weeks was also granted to all territories for the submission of the School Based Assessments (SBAs) for CSEC and Internal Assessments (IA) for CAPE.

However, the exact submission date of the SBAs would differ among respective territories based on when the varying countries will require their students to submit the SBAs to national bodies before it is then relayed to CXC.

The release of broad topics for the Paper Two, which will feature open ended, structured questions, will also be done a few weeks before the commencement of the written exams. CXC will share the broad topics with the respective Ministries of Education for dissemination to the candidates.

Candidates will still have the option to defer their examinations to the next year. This option can be accessed up to the day before the examinations commencement.
“We continue to work with our stakeholders for the best interest of our students across the region,” Dr. Wesley said.

Individual territories will be required to have respective contingency plans in place to deal with any case where a student might contract COVID-19 during the exam period and require isolation.