Ministry zeroing-in on schools producing CSEC failures - says ungraded issue to be probed by CXC

Ministry zeroing-in on schools producing CSEC failures – says ungraded issue to be probed by CXC

Aug 19, 2018 News

Over 600 Guyanese candidates of the 12,269 who participated in the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate [CSEC] examination this year failed to secure a grade.
This is according to Chief Education Officer, Marcel Hutson, who was questioned about Guyana’s failure rate in the regional examination, in wake of the recent disclosure of the Caribbean Examinations Council [CXC] – which administers the exam – that 11,000 candidates gained no passes.
Hutson revealed that while the Ministry had not in the past analysed this state of affairs, for this year it has been able to ascertain that 600-plus candidates from within the public education system may not have passed a subject.
“We have actually looked at it now and that will be something that we will be addressing, because it is important to us. This is something new, we are doing it for the first time and it is something that we will do going forward, because we would like to see those numbers keep reducing,” said Hutson.
Moreover, he divulged the Ministry’s plan to scrutinise the results in hopes of detecting where the shortcomings are. “We are actually doing the disaggregation where we isolate the schools so that we can recognise where we have that issue,” Hutson said.
Meanwhile, the Education Ministry is also looking into yet another issue that has left a number of candidates ungraded, despite claims that they wrote the said ungraded examinations.
At a press conference Friday at the Ministry’s National Centre for Educational Resource Development [NCERD], it was revealed that even the top student of Region 10, Zoe Sills, with 12 ones and one grade two, was a victim of the ungraded situation.
Sharing concern about the development was popular media personality, Gordon Moseley, who also hails from Region 10.
Based on Moseley’s information, the official CXC results for the Mackenzie High student indicated that the subject of Spanish was ungraded, despite evidence to suggest her full participation. Added to this, he shared information that the student was known to excel in the subject area.
Addressing the concern Friday was Assistant Superintendent of Exams, Ms. Dawn Griffith. She explained that the word ungraded alongside a subject, instead of a grade, usually means that the candidate did not complete some aspect of the examination in question.
“Ungraded means that either the child did not submit an SBA [School Based Assessment] or the child was absent for a particular subject or for part of it – Paper One or Paper Two,” Griffith explained.
She however noted that once this is not the case, candidates have the privilege of having the issue queried. “We do have persons who will come in and query,” said Griffith, who noted that private candidates can come directly into the Ministry, while public school candidates can commence the process through their respective schools.
At the level of the school, Griffith said that a letter is prepared and sent to the Ministry of Education which in turn forwards the query to CXC to be investigated.
“They can come in to us,” said Griffith of candidates facing the ungraded issue.

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