Latest update April 4th, 2025 12:14 AM
CXC to review syllabus given problems with reading
Registrar of the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC), Dr. Didacus Jules during an interview on Monday said that there has been problem with reading in the Caribbean in general and the council has been looking at this, especially in the context of their strategic plan.
According to Jules, they are undertaking a review of their syllabuses right now and a particular point of focus is going to be on the various language arts syllabuses — English Language and English Literature.
“There is an internal debate happening now as to what we are going to do in particular about these two subjects but we are not going to make that decision solely within CXC. We are going to involve stakeholders across the board.”
Dr. Jules said that one of the things that he is doing in the strategic plan is to create a network of secondary school teachers across the entire Caribbean using virtual means like a sort of Wikipedia approach so that all secondary school teachers can be constituted into virtual subject associations.
“Our language arts teachers, our mathematics teachers— they will then play a role in helping us to resolve those issues. So we will have real input from across the profession.”
He noted the need to be careful with the reading issue as people are looking at it in the traditional context of reading a book when we are in the computer age.
“The same students who people are saying are not reading at all, they are texting; they are on the computer 24/7 reading websites and so on.”
According to him, it is a challenge to their mode of instruction and delivery. “Yes we need to encourage people to read more in the traditional way, but we also recognise that there are new, modern ways of interaction with this thing called reading.”
Dr. Jules stated that they are sitting on 30 years of data of student performance in all subject areas. “To date, no one has actually mined that data. If we analyse, for example, the last 30 years of performance, it should tell us something. I’m hoping in terms of what are the concepts that Caribbean students have been traditionally weak in…it should point to certain specific deficiencies that will then in a more scientific way guide us as to the kind of remediation we need to do.”
On the issue of agriculture, Dr. Jules said that there was a meeting in Guyana a few months ago with Heads of Caricom institutions.
“At that event we did a presentation to the agriculture cluster of Caricom and what they have agreed to do is work with CXC.”
He said that they are going to provide their best experts to work alongside the CXC syllabus officers and some of the examiners, to redesign the agriculture syllabus so it is not only modernised but also more practical in its orientation.
“They are also going to provide material for use in the schools…They have pledged to also assist us with the training of teachers in the application of the new syllabus and equally important, CARDI (Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute) has now sponsored an annual top award in agriculture with effect from this year.”
On a similar note, Dr. Jules said that CXC has now undertaken research to see where the bulk of Caribbean students go in North America.
He noted that the Canadian and United States embassies are providing that data to them so that they can then double check that list and compare it with those with whom they have articulation agreements.
“There will be a concerted marketing thrust for those with whom we have no relations to establish such relations.”
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