– parents, teachers, students demanding review of grades
Guyana’s top school, Queen’s College (QC) and other sister schools in Georgetown have vowed that they will not rest until the inconsistencies coming out of the recent Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC)-facilitated exams are rectified and students are given their deserved Grades.
QC’s Principal told the media on Thursday that everything possible will be done, even if means taking legal action or removing the school from writing the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE) and Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examination.
The matter is in fact a regional one as CXC facilitates examinations in multiple other Caribbean countries which have expressed similar distraught with the discrepancies noticed in their results.
Queen’s college, over the years, has consistently produced Guyana’s top performing students in the aforementioned exams. In 2019, it was QC student Michael Bhopaul who topped the Region in CAPE, previously topping the country in 2017 in CSEC. In 2018, the school produced the country’s top CSEC student, Christian Pile with 19 Grade Ones.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Council revealed earlier in the year that the Paper Two would not be administered, and grades will be determined by the candidates School-Based Assessments (SBA’s) and their performance on Paper One. Electronic testing would also be administered online to replace paper-based tests.
Over $15 million was forward to CXC by QC alone as payment for students taking the exams. However, with the grades now raising several questions and causing regional distress, people are angry that the Council has not addressed the matter head-on and but has instead directed candidates to make further payments for individual subject reviews.
Principal of Queen’s College, Jackie Ralph told the media that she had been unable to sleep for the last 72 hours due to the distress that the shocking results has caused her but, more so, students in Guyana, their educators and their parents.
“I would have spoken with the Minister of Education and I know that she would have released a statement earlier today. She intends to stand behind us and we intend to — together with our other partners in education — take his matter to the very end with CXC. If it means that we have to go towards the legal way, we will do that. If it means that we will petition to remove this college from writing CAPE and CSEC, we will have to do that. If it means that we will have to go forward to CARICOM and speak to the representative for education there to take this matter up with the Council, we will do that,” Ralph assured students and parents gathered at the school.
She said that, thus far, over 100 cases of discrepancies have been noted from QC. Though CXC has not yet published the official broadsheet of all results, the school has been able to gather information from its individual students.
“It is with great disappointment that we have observed our top performing students in Guyana– top one percent– who appear to have underperformed in certain specific subject areas,” Ralph said.
“We have, over the years, tracked our students’ performances and what I can say to you [is] we know that our students have not received the expected grade that we have predicted. We are not prepared to accept the position that CXC has taken and we intend to pursue this matter vigorously.”
Some of the subject areas listed for which students have received questionable grades are Integrated Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, Pure Mathematics Units 1 and 2, Additional Mathematics, Geography, Social Studies and more.
President of QC’s Parent Teacher Association (PTA), Michelle Fraser, giving an example of the discrepancies observed said that for Integrated Math, in 2018, the College got 38 Grade Ones; in 2019, 36 Grade Ones and in 2020, zero. For the same subject, in 2018 the school received 6 Grade Twos; in 2019, 9 Grade Twos and, in 2020, zero.
“This kind of trend has presented itself over and over. When we looked further afield from QC we heard the same kind of trends. This is unacceptable, we will not accept it and we intend for CXC to understand that we will not accept it,” she said.
Meanwhile, representative of the QC Old Students’ Association Board, Kwabina Griffith said that there are students who wrote Pure Math and Applied Math and received Grade Ones but received received lower Grades — as low as Grade Four — for Integrated Math, a subset and easier version of the former two.
In another case, Griffith that five CSEC students completed their SBAs as a group for a single Grade but the final results show 1 Grade One, 1 Grade Three and 3 Grade Fives. “How can that be possible?” he questioned. “The disparity in the final grades is too much to be accounted for simply by a multiple-choice paper.”
Prior to the exams, representatives of the school said that they tried multiple times to get information from CXC on the new grading system, in light of the exclusion of Paper 2, but they were told that there was nothing to worry about.
Months later in present time, QC Student Zane Ramotar vented at Thursday’s event: “The Paper One has a weight of 40 percent, the Paper 2 has a weight of 40 percent and the SBA has a weight of 20 percent…when asked about what is going on CXC said the weighting will be the same but I want you to follow me on this one. If the Paper One is worth 40 and the Paper 2 is worth 40 and we are not doing the Paper 2 how will the weighting be the same? Who really got the 40? It can’t be me!”
Providing additional information was External Examination Coordinator, Samantha Liverpool. She said that moderators who previewed the SBAs of the students applauded them for commendable work — as part of their yearly perusal– but this was not reflected in CXC’s grading of the submissions.
She said that many past paper questions were repeated on the exams and this makes it hard to believe that so many students would have been oblivious to the correct answers. “Our students at the College are accustomed to very challenging examinations and they all can attest to that. They believe that our exam here is two times harder than the exams they receive externally and we have proven that for numerous years. So, for this year, for me to see the results that I’m seeing, I said in all my years at the College — which is over a decade — I’ve never seen results like I’m seeing this year,” she said.
Representatives of the school said that while some citizens are reasoning that candidates in Guyana were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and the elections, this is far from the case as students put their best into their performance and therefore deserve their correct grades.
Speaking on behalf of herself and the candidates was QC student Tylor Grandison. She said frankly: “People may think ‘oh Queens College’, we’re just on our high horses. Well yes, I guess we are, because we don’t get those grades…for those students who received such terrible grades they can’t even compose themselves to get out of their rooms and so I represent them.”
Principal Ralph said that the schools she speaks on behalf of and the country will accept nothing less than a re-grading of the examinations.
