The Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) has convened a team of academic experts to review the modified approach for the administration of the July/August 2020 CSEC and CAPE Examinations after several Caribbean countries have called for the same.
On Friday, the Council announced that CXC Chairman, Professor Sir Hilary Beckles has convened the team which will examine the moderation process applied to the School-Based Assessment (SBA) and the grading process, among other related matters.
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 candidate’s SBAs and their performance on Paper One. However, when the results were released in September, educators and candidates across the Caribbean expressed alarm after witnessing a range of inconsistencies in the grades administered.
Prior to the exams, representatives of high schools in Guyana 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. To date, thousands across the Region have signed several petitions for CXC to conduct a review of the examination and its grading system.
Chairing the review team is Professor Hazel Simmons-McDonald, Professor Emerita and retired Pro Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the Open Campus, at the University of the West Indies (UWI).
Other members of the team are Professor Andrew Downes, retired Pro Vice- Chancellor of Planning and Development at UWI; Professor Francis De Lanoy, President of the University of Curacao; Harrilal Seecharan, retired Chief Education Officer at Ministry of Education in Trinidad and Tobago; and Michael S. Browne, Minister of Education in Antigua and Barbuda and Chair of the CARICOM Council for Human and Social Development (COHSOD).
The team will meet with the Chairman of CXC on Friday and will commence work immediately and report to the Chairman by October 16, 2020.
