Following the recommendation of the independent review team, the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) has created an online portal to expedite the handling of reviews and queries from students who wrote the 2020 July/August Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) and Caribbean Advance Proficiency Examinations (CAPE).
These students may submit their requests for review via http://bit.ly/CXC-RW and their queries via http://bit.ly/CXC-QY.
The facilitation of easier access and speedier response for Query Requests (QR), distinct from requests for review (RFR), was one of 23 recommendations made by the team. Eight of these were earmarked for immediate implementation to address specific issues noted in the 2020 examinations.
According to the team, the query portal should be distinct from the review portal and available year-round and should have a bank of suggested concerns and potential responses from which to choose, based on frequently asked questions and responses.
In the case of reviews, the team recommended that the deadline for the submission of requests be extended, that the cost per review be reduced, that each review include a remark in keeping with the pre-January 2018 practice, that they be expedited, and that the CXC be prevented from arriving at a lower grade than what it had previously awarded the student.
Additionally, for a predetermined period immediately after the publication of grades every year, a RFR Portal should be created and be visibly accessible on CXC’s webpage – similarly prominent as the invitation to take a survey when the CXC website is initially accessed.
The council has so far implemented these measures by extending the deadline to November 6, reducing the cost per review to US$15, and creating the requested portal.
Other recommendations for immediate implementation include the execution of a reflection workshop focused on improved communication with local registrars about the grading exercise and function of profiles in grading.
“Investigate the most expeditious and preferred avenues of communication with local registrars with the aim to strengthen and expedite communication between CXC and local registrars; formalize and provide continuous and interconnected series of training workshops for local registrars covering all aspects of the examination process across subjects and examinations; conduct reflection workshop(s) to interpret feedback from local registrars to strengthen the examination process and deepen communication between CXC and local registrars [and] create a bank of interactive training modules and videos available on demand to local registrars from a secure portal on CXC website,” they advised.
The team has also suggested that the Council engage in “damage control” by leveraging reports across various media “to ensure the continued promotion of consistency, accuracy, fairness and application of standards at all stages of the process across years, subjects, and examination sessions.”
‘Sensitivity analysis’
The report itself has concluded that while the grading model was generally adequate given the circumstances, it could have been subject to more sensitivity analysis.
“The results of using the model produced some degree of inter-grade shifting in the distribution of grades for some subjects. The CXC should move towards reducing the degree of subjectivity in the determination of subject grades from the profile grades and also make the grading process easier to understand,” it notes.
There was a lot of focus on the 100% moderation of the Schools Based Assessments (SBA) which but for a few subject exceptions, revealed “a significant difference between moderator scores and teacher scores.”
Specifically, the Report from the Technical Advisory Commit-tee (TAC) indicated that students’ scores from the expanded moderation process were generally lower than in previous years.
According to the report the SBA component will require more attention over the next two years and “possibly the notion of sampling may have to be abandoned.”
This means that going forward there may be 100% moderation of SBA. The 100% moderation is in some cases a misnomer as all SBAs were not moderated; instead “all centres” had a systematic sample of SBAs from every subject area moderated.
In fact in 2020 there were 222,472 CSEC SBAs submitted and 98,734 (44%) moderated, while 54,049 CAPE SBAs were submitted and 30,947 (57%) moderated.
The “generally” lower grades earned by students was, they concluded, a result of several factors, including the lack of thoroughness and vigilance by teachers while marking SBAs.
Teachers have been accused of awarding full marks in some instances for areas that students did not even attempt and of accepting projects which were inconsistent with the expectations of the scoring rubrics and the requirements of the syllabus.
Also cited was the overuse of informal sources from the internet which detracted from the quality of SBA assignments and the misguided belief that the CXC moderators would be inclined to reduce teachers’ marks and that some element of mark inflation would protect their students from falling below their expected grade.
Schools were also accused of incorrectly registering students, failing to submit scores or submitting incorrect scores, entering zero instead of No SBA in the portal, incorrectly assigning candidates to groups, submitting corrupt files, and submitting the inadequate number of SBAs.
The council, meanwhile, has been cited for “conversion of files failures”, “removal of cover sheets”, “challenges encountered in uploading files and addition of files.”
In total, these errors related to SBA submissions saw 11,575 students ungraded compared to 8,062 in 2019.
According to the report “in many instances” these can be attributed to the school level and internal issues identified.
A table detailing the instances of each school level issues shows that 56% or 6,528 of the “ungraded” awards likely originated from these. For example, at CSEC, in 1,957 instances no SBA’s were submitted compared to 187 in 2019.
There, however, remain 5,047 instances which are not attributed to teacher error.
The team has consequently recommended “choice workshops” where teachers can access a reservoir of professional development videos, interactive training modules, and other forms of training on requirements, content, format, structure and moderation of SBAs readily available on CXC’s website and accessible anytime by teachers with the least, reasonable restrictions.
The team was led by Professor of the University of West Indies Hazel Simmons-McDonald and also comprised the Minister of Education of Antigua and Barbuda, Michael Browne; President of the University of Curacao, Francis De Lanoy; Former Chief Education Officer of Trinidad and Tobago, Harilall Seecharran; and Professor Andrew Downes.
They conducted the review through extensive discussions with the registrar and staff of CXC to determine the processes and procedures that were implemented in arriving at: (i) the modified approach selected for administering the 2020 examinations; (ii) the approaches utilised in undertaking assessment of candidates’ performance on the papers set for the examinations; (iii) procedures used in determining the grades awarded and (iv) differences between the procedures implemented in 2020 and those in previous years.
They considered a variety of CXC documents and data on results from the current and previous years’ examinations and scheduled a series of stakeholder focus-group meetings with the Caribbean Association of Principals of Secondary Schools (CAPSS), the Caribbean Union of Teachers (CUT), representatives of local Registrars across the region, and the independent CXC Technical Advisory Committee (TAC). The team also received and considered correspondence from students and a parent organisation.
