CXC faces more questions on timing of exams
Published:Sunday | April 24, 2022 | 12:12 AM
Stakeholders across the region are still asking questions about the timing of this year’s Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) exams, which is slated to begin next month.
Educators are of the view that CXC should push back the sitting of the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) and Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE) exit exams by at least a month, as students are ill-prepared because of their long absence from the classroom due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Jamaica’s education and youth minister, Fayval Williams, said her ministry has requested an urgent meeting with Senator Kay McConney, chairwoman of CARICOM’s Council for Human and Social Development (COHSOD), to appeal for an extension.
“We believe our students deserve additional time for their exams and so [we will] present our case to them. Some of the other accommodations they made last year, we’re asking for those as well,” Williams said on Friday at the installation ceremony for the 2021-2023 cohort of the National Youth Advisory Council of Jamaica at the Office of the Prime Minister.
Embarrassing
In a media statement issued yesterday, Paula-Anne Moore, parent advocate spokesperson and coordinator of the Group of Concerned Parents in Barbados and the Caribbean Coalition for Exam Redress, described the refusal to delay the regional exams as embarrassing. She said maybe CXC and COHSOD will now finally pay attention to the concerns publicly expressed by parents, teachers and students since early 2021 regarding the 2022 exams now that “Jamaica has come out so forcefully in a rather unprecedented manner, advocating for a delay to the 2022 CXC exams”.
“This state of affairs re the 2022 CXC exams, and CARICOM/COHSOD/CXC’s insistence on a ‘business as usual’ approach to the 2022 exams, in the third academic year within the pandemic, is deeply embarrassing and damaging to our regional brand, and says much about our societies’ compassion towards our region’s children. The callousness exhibited is deeply disturbing,” read a section of the statement.
The lobby group also advanced that the regional bloc was a part of the problem.
“CXC’s recent response re calls for delay to the 2022 Exams was a specious one, but understandable as CARICOM’s COHSOD has once again provided cover to CXC. It seems that our children’s and teachers’ mental and emotional well-being are acceptable collateral damage,” the coalition said.
It also argued that the philosophical goal provided by CXC as justification for what the coalition described as the regional exams body’s intransigence and inflexibility on ‘regional consensus’ appears more important to CXC than exhibiting care and concern for students.
“Our CARICOM project has once again failed our children, perhaps because the change of CARICOM’s governance structure re CXC – to include external independent regulation – remains absent,” the coalition said.
The group also highlighted what it described as modifications to the UK’s Cambridge exams to address pandemic-induced challenges to education in that country.
“Thus, while the UK’s standard 2022 exam dates were kept, broad topics were provided to students and teachers months prior and an undertaking to mark more generously was provided. The UK has demonstrated reasonable and compassionate care and concern for their students. What has CARICOM demonstrated?” the coalition questioned.
It also noted that UK schools had the additional advantage of starting their 2021/2022 academic year on time and were face to face long before most CARICOM schools.
“Again, very little in practical terms has been provided by CXC to aid students and teachers in (the) 2022 exams and to address the challenges of three academic years within a pandemic. CXC is noticeably and tellingly silent on those points,” the statement said.
The coalition added: “Their comments on needing to ensure students obtain results in time for university deadlines, on further investigation, do not hold water, as the bulk of students taking exams (5th and Lower 6 forms) do not need results for university entrance. Ill prepared, stressed. Upper 6 students are also unlikely to optimise their results and therefore university entrance, as well.”
NOT READY
Jamaica made the request for the urgent meeting with COHSOD after the education ministry, in collaboration with the National Secondary Students’ Council, conducted a survey between February 23 and March 8, which asked students about their preparedness for the CSEC and CAPE examinations.
Some 2,812 students were surveyed and 1,754 of them expressed the need for additional time to prepare for the sitting of the exams.
Williams noted that despite numerous appeals, CXC did not grant an extension of the examination dates.
In response to students choosing to defer, Williams said Jamaica doesn’t believe that should be the only option available for students.
The minister said that since January, the education ministry had been advocating verbally and in writing for an extension.
“Students absolutely need more time and so we will be advocating strenuously for this. COHSOD is the last level in terms of calling attention to this problem,” said Williams.