CXC Results

Sep 30, 2020 Editorial

The cries of disagreements have been loud and relentless. In fact, it is intensifying not only in Guyana, but regionally. This was confirmed by the caption: “Massive region-wide opposition to CXC results” (KN September 26).
Affected students and their parents are enraged that this has happened, and which could not have occurred at a worse time. According to the reports, hundreds of students have been negatively impacted. It is where students’ results have way lower than expected grades for subjects that they were acing all the time. Guyana’s Ministry of Education is on record that the grades reported for Integrated Mathematics and Pure Mathematics at many schools were “unacceptable” (Ministry of Education questions CXC over discrepancies in results, KN September 25).
Guyana’s Education Ministry is not alone in lamenting the results and lodging a complaint with the Registrar of the CXC. It is joined by corresponding ministries in “Antigua and Barbuda, Trinidad and Tobago, ad Barbados and St. Lucia” (KN September 26). In the least case scenario, this signifies that over a thousand students are feeling the effects of some snafu in the CXC marking scheme, quality control, and overall management.
What we can parse from the clamors over this matter is that there are major differences over “the teacher’s projected grades and the final grades allocated to students.”
And second, that SBAs were submitted on a timely basis and that maximum scores were expected, but low grades came back from the CXC’s handiwork. It is clear that the gap is wide, and not a matter of students and teachers anticipating a Grade 1 but receiving a Grade 2. From all indications, it is much wider. If it were as close as the illustration provided, then it is possible that the outcry would have been muted. But because they are so far apart, to such a widespread degree, the objections have spiraled and gain strength.
There is another side to this unfortunate development, which is due to the untimeliness of it all. Many Guyanese students had already made up their minds that their educational path was straight on to the University of Guyana and had filed applications for admission. Those applications are contingent upon UG receiving timely grades which are accurate and, hence, could be depended upon to proceed to the next steps in the admission process. Now this is held up due to this grade dispute, while time is running out for those new students hoping to attend classes, which commences in just over a week’s time. The window for resolving this matter is tight.
Yet what is more alarming is the headline from another section of the media, which informed Guyanese students, parents, teachers, and involved senior ministry officials that, in a nutshell, the CXC stood by the results, and that any examination review or probe was off the table. The governors of the CXC have a history of obstinacy and erecting impenetrable walls around the conduct of its business. It has done so for the longest while with its accounting reports and results; its books are not for public consumption, the same public that it serves. And now, the CXC is at it again, through refusing to review complaints, and insist that it did not err and that all is well.
As we interpret, the powers at the CXC are, in effect, saying: we have spoken, therefore, that should be that and let us all move along. That may have been so where a handful of students were involved, or the troubles were limited to a few under-performing schools in a single country. But it is not so since the opposite applies.
In Guyana, top students from top schools have lent their voices to share their disagreements and disappointments at what is now said to be final and unapproachable, thus untouchable.

The CXC’s response is wrong and reeks too much of the unilateralism that comes from being a virtually unchallenged monopoly. It should be called to task by CARICOM to work with member states and seek to resolve this issue in a less adamant manner. The latest is that the CXC people have announced an “independent review” which is where it should have started. We are encouraged.

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