With thousands of candidates who sat this year’s CSEC and CAPE examinations trying to access their results online on Thursday night, the high volume of cyber traffic caused the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) website to crash for a few hours.
While some Caribbean Secondary Education (CSEC) and Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE) candidates were able to view their results online, many persons were still having difficulties accessing theirs up to Friday.
From last Thursday night at 10 o’clock, this year’s CSEC candidates became the first to be able to access their results online. CXC said this was the first time that the facility was being made available to candidates, although it had been issuing the results to Participating Territories through its Online Registration System (ORS) for the past three years.
Candidates who wish to view their results online can access them at http://ors.cxc.org/studentportal.They must then enter their 10-digit registration number, last name and date of birth to access their results.
Stabroek News spoke to some candidates, past and present, about the new service. One girl who sat this year’s CSEC examinations considered it to be “by far the one of the cleverest steps ever made by the CXC body. It helps to ease the stress and prolonged torture of anticipation that people have to go through while waiting for results from the school.” Another candidate said that she loved it. “I got to see my results privately, at home, in the company of my family. Imagine how embarrassing it would have been if I’d done badly and then had to tell other students what I got,” she said.
Another said although she was happy that she could receive her results without having to wait on the Ministry to release them, she felt that the persons in charge of the website were unprepared to deal with the large volume of traffic. She said that because of this, the website was very slow and it took her over two hours to get her results.
One boy who sat the CSEC examination previously said that he was jealous of the students who wrote the exam this year. “I’m upset. In my year we had to do it the old-fashioned way! I’m not saying it was a bad idea…I just wish it could have been implemented sooner,” he related.
Meanwhile, the Trinidad Newsday on Saturday reported that CXC has received reports that some students have fraudulently altered their 2011 CSEC and CAPE results which were released online.
According to Newsday, CXC Public Information Officer Cleveland Sam confirmed that CXC received reports that students were altering their results, which were issued in Portable Document Format (PDF) on CXC’s website. As a result, Trinidad’s Ministry of Education issued a release advising the public that “any alterations, additions or deletions to the 2011 CAPE and CSEC results posted by the CXC on its website constitutes a breach of criminal law, and is an act of fraud.”
The release stated too that persons who are found to be involved in such actions would be subject to criminal prosecution.
It further added that the only official and legal proof of results is the preliminary results issued by CXC, which is distributed by school principals and the ministry for students and private candidates, respectively.
When asked what measures were being taken to avoid a repeat of the situation Sam told Newsday, “We would have to see what other forms of security measures can be taken for January CAPE and CSEC results.” Sam could not confirm immediately which countries had reports of altered grades.
CXC has said local registrars and principals of schools have the capacity to restrict access to the results from some schools and candidates if they deem it necessary for compliance reasons.
In addition, to candidates’ results, CXC has also made the broadsheets, centre statistics and Merit Lists for schools available to principals via the ORS. Candidates are advised to check the calendar on www.cxc.org for the release dates for CAPE, CSEC and CCSLC [Carib-bean Certificate of Secondary Level Competence] results.
