(Trinidad Guardian) The Caribbean Examination Council -CXC- in Barbados has announced that no student who wrote the CSEC math examination earlier this month will have to re-write it. The decision came after a much-publicised cheating scandal emerged in this country.
In a post on its website yesterday CXC stated that it has found “no breach of examination papers before or during the exams”, which warrant students re-doing it.
On Wednesday, May 15, a video began circulating on social media of students from a secondary school in Port-of-Spain using their cellphones to share the answer sheet during the exam. At the time it appeared the students were unsupervised since they were not only using their phones but were seen walking about the room and talking, which is in contravention of the examination rules.
CXC and the Ministry of Education launched an immediate investigation after the video began circulating. The Ministry fired the invigilators who left the students unsupervised. There had been concerns that the incident would have impacted all students who sat the exam. But CXC said after receiving written reports, examining other material and following due diligence, there appears to have been no breach. But the council said it was clear that there was lapse supervision in some examination centres and that has been addressed. The Registrar of the council also gave the assurance that “the principle of fairness will be paramount in our dealings with these unfortunate incidents.”
CXC said any irregularities in any centre will be addressed as is done after every examination.
