Education Minister Nicolette Henry was in buoyant mood when she announced the results of the CSEC examinations at NCERD in Kingston on Wednesday. She told the media that of the 11,467 students who had registered this year, 73% had achieved Grades 1 to 3 at the General and Technical proficiency levels. This, she said, was better than the regional pass rate announced by the Caribbean Examinations Council, which was 64%, and represented this country’s “best recorded performance”. Last year Guyana’s pass rate was 63.68%, and the year before that, 63.69%.
These improved figures were not reflected in every subject which was taken, in addition to which the subject areas which recorded the best results were not those which might be regarded as core ones. A pass rate of 90% or more, for example, was obtained in Agricultural Science (99%), Religious Education (100%), Information Technology (98%), Physical Education and Sports (100%) and Industrial Technology-Electrical (93.4%). It should be noted that with the exception of Information Technology which can be acquired at any stage in a career either in school or as an adult, the others are essentially vocational areas of interest.
Most people, however, will be concerned about performance in the basic subjects, the two most fundamental, of course, being English and Mathematics. Where English Language is concerned, i.e. English A, there was some cause for the Ministry to indulge a modest feeling of satisfaction, since the pass rate was 77%, a significant increase on last year’s figure of 67%. Maths, however, afforded less excuse for complacency, since that pass rate did not move from the 43% recorded last year, and remains below the regional pass rate. It is true that the Additional Mathematics results showed improvement, increasing from 68.4% in 2018 to 80% this year. However, it has to be noted that the numbers who take Add Maths, as it is called, is limited, since it is mostly needed by those who seek to do Mathematics or Physics at a higher level.
In this instance, as in all the other subject areas, Dr Henry did not provide the numbers of those who sat the exam, making it difficult to assess the significance of the pass percentage. One can assume, for example, that most CSEC candidates sat English A and Maths, so the pass percentages there have some meaning. But what about Religious Education, for example, which as mentioned above, was promoted as having a 100% pass rate, but where the numbers who sat the exam were probably very small? Yet it is these peripheral subjects which have probably driven the overall pass rate up and may not be a good gauge of assessing how the entire cohort performed in the basic areas.
The Minister said that there were seven subjects which showed a decline in performance, the most notable of these being English Literature (English B) where the pass rate had fallen to 58.1% this year from 78.6% in 2018. There was also a decline in Caribbean History (72% to 68.1%), Economics (70% to 68%), Integrated Science (72.3% to 69.1%), Human and Social Biology (72.4% to 62%), French (79% to 73.1%), and Textiles, Clothing and Fashion.
The first point to be noted is that most of these could probably be regarded as core subjects, and it would be useful to know how many students actually sat them and whether those numbers have increased or decreased since last year. To acquire a certain versatility of English expression, for example, it is usually necessary to have some exposure to literature, but many schools simply do not teach it any longer. So how many candidates registered for English B this year, as compared to last year?
The decrease in the pass rate for French is not good news for a country with global ambitions, although again, one would like to know how many actually wrote the French paper. Furthermore, how many candidates sat Spanish, which is the primary foreign language taught in this country, and what were the results?
The decline in Integrated Science is interesting if only because the pass rates for Chemistry, Biology and Physics all registered notable improvement. The first of these moved from 56.4% in 2018 to 62% this year; the second from 64% to 77% and the last from 66.2% to 70%. One can only speculate that those who opted to sit the Science subjects separately did so because they wanted to pursue Science at an advanced level, and clearly would not have needed to take Integrated Science as well. Perhaps the Integrated Science candidates represented a wider spectrum of the student population, but one would have needed to see the figures to establish whether this was indeed the case.
Minister Henry told the media that there had been improved performances in the Business subjects, which recorded over 80% pass rates, while Electronic Documentation Preparation and Management maintained its rate of well over 90%. Here again, however, while the performances are commendable, these are vocational subjects, and tell us little about the achievement levels of the student body as a whole in those subject areas which underpin all learning.
The oversight in not providing the public with figures for how many actually sat a particular exam is perhaps best illustrated by the Music results. Last year 28.57% of candidates passed, we were told; in 2019 the rate was 100%. Could it be, perhaps, that only one student took the exam this year?