This year’s Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) and Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE) examinations have been delayed by three weeks and are now scheduled to be administered from May 23rd.
Registrar of the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC), Dr Wayne Wesley said that the decision was made during an emergency meeting which was held yesterday to discuss several matters related to the examinations.
“After careful deliberation and consideration of all the pertinent issues, council agreed that the revised strategy for the 2022 Regional Examinations shall be as followed: a delay in the sitting of the regional examinations by three weeks,” Wesley announced during a press conference.
He said this will provide candidates additional time to prepare for the examinations.
The examinations will be administered from Monday, May 23rd to July 1st. Results are projected to be released late August or early September, 2022.
Accordingly to Wesley, a total 105,078 candidates are registered to sit the CSEC examinations and another 25,429 for CAPE.
Additionally, the deadline for the submission of School Based Assessments (SBAs) has been extended by a two weeks.
Wesley pointed out that students who have already submitted their SBAs can now use the additional time to review and resubmit their work. “SBAs that are already submitted would perhaps still be with the local registrar and then they would have to manage how they treat with that process…They will handle that process at a local level. The student then would therefore have the option to either recall their SBAs and have them modified as they see fit as long as the final grading for that SBA is not uploaded,” he explained.
Further, broad topics will be released to candidates within the next two weeks. “CXC will share with the Ministries of Education, for communication with candidates, the broad topics to be assessed on Paper Two,” Wesley said.
In 2020 and 2021, there were also disruptions in the examinations because of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, both CAPE and CSEC were delayed by two weeks.
Wesley noted that students still have the option to defer the sitting of their examinations and the hardship policy will continue to be implemented. “Where students experienced hardships, once those reports are submitted, then consideration is given in that respect,” he said.
In terms of delays in results, Director of Operations of CXC’s Examination Services Division, Dr Nicole Manning said systems has been put in place to ensure that this issue does not recur.
“We have put systems in place to ensure that we would not have this situation again for this ….We are confident that we will not have a repeat of that,” she said.
In 2021, Manning reminded that there were two sittings of the examinations which placed a constraint on the resources of CXC. “We are confident that we would not have that issue this year,” she assured.
There had been complaints here and in the region about students not being ready for the originally scheduled CXC exams.
