…More than last year’s 36
(Trinidad Express) Fifty-four students were caught cheating in the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations in the region this year.
This was an increase from the 36 who were caught cheating last year.
The information was disclosed by Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) director of operations Dr Nicole Manning during the official release of results for May-June 2024 CXC examinations at an event in Dominica yesterday.
She noted a vast increase in cheating compared to last year, saying: “We saw a lot of cheating this year—54 (students). Last year it would have been 36. That’s a big increase.”
She did not say which countries specifically the students came from.
Manning indicated the legitimacy of the record, having received admission by students.
“And candidates have to sign to agree what happened. So, we are not just making it up, they are telling you ‘I did this’, as well as they are caught literally with the phone looking, saying they were googling the question. Unfortunate. It is not something we want to see,” she said.
Manning renewed a call she made last year encouraging students to uphold ethics and integrity.
“Ethics, integrity, it’s critical for the fabric of us as human beings, but more so the ideal Caribbean citizen,” she said. “It is not the fact that nobody is looking, it is about (students) and the ideal Caribbean citizen must stand out, teachers and the system as a whole. People of the region, ethics and integrity; if there is anything they want to say about us, they must say I want to hire you, (because) you have integrity.”
The Express reached out to Minister of Education Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly for a comment, but received no immediate response yesterday.
Manning also noted that CSEC saw a reduction in subject entries, but an increase in candidate entries.
“While we have more candidates doing exams, we have less subjects being done by those candidates,” she said.
During her overview of the results, Manning noted an increase in absenteeism in the CAPE exams by 5%, and a rounded-off increase of 7% in absenteeism in the CSEC exams.
She provided the five top reasons given by students for absenteeism.
These included personal emergency, not adequately prepared, documented illness, death in the family, and those who preferred not to attend. Given this issue, Manning encouraged students who feel inadequately prepared to still show up and do their best.
In Trinidad and Tobago, 34,490 candidates were registered to write the 2024 May-June CSEC and CAPE examinations.
Meanwhile, registrar and chief executive officer of CXC Dr Wayne Wesley said students’ average performance in mathematics at CSEC was worrying.
Speaking at the official release of results, he stressed that greater emphasis must be placed on Mathematics and English.
The results were available for students to access yesterday via an online portal at 3 p.m.
At the official ceremony ahead of the results, Wesley noted that after examining the results for the past five years “every year there are more students registering for Mathematics than there is for English; and what we have recognised on average, about 79,000 persons register for mathematics and about 73,000 persons register for English.”
He said the performance for English over that five-year period is estimated to about 79% to 80%.
But “the average performance for mathematics is about anywhere between 55% and to about 59%. In fact, if we really strictly apply the entire cohort, they are actually about 44%.
“This year, the performance in mathematics is a bit lower than last year… but what it says to me is that when we did further analysis as to the acquisition of five subjects or more, we recognised a certain number, percentage above 6% of the entire population of persons registered for the exam, getting five or more (subjects),” Wesley said.
