A senior official of the Barbados-based Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) has warned the Region against measuring the annual results of the examination body simply in Grade Ones or Twos.
Speaking at the official release of the May-June 2015 Examinations results, CXC Registrar Glenroy Cumberbatch said there is a purpose to education and as a result, the Region must examine how the CXC subjects can contribute to building better societies.
“Despite the achievements we’ve had in the Region, crime and violence still seem to dominate and also we had very high unemployment among youth,” Cumberbatch said, noting that in some instances unemployment rates were as high as 50 per cent depending on the country, with especially high figures around females.
“In some subjects, we have four times the entries for females, as opposed to males, but towards the end of the process, we still have high unemployment among the same females,” he said.
Barbados Education Minister Ronald Jones noted that in the Region, the CXC had proven to be a worthwhile catalyst for the improvement of the Region’s educational standards.
“CXC is on the cutting edge. It is one of the outstanding examination bodies in the world,” he told the ceremony, noting that there was “need to get more students doing our exams in the Region.
“The system is leaking too many of our children; that leaking will cause a flood of further despair,” he said expressing concern with some subject areas, and listed the seeming lack of interest in Social Studies and Caribbean History, and the apparent decline in interest in subjects such as Human and Social Biology.
He said to change the current trends, both students and teachers must work together and continue to strive for success.
Meanwhile, the Senior Assistant CXC Registrar, Noel Stennett said that electronic marking, which was first introduced in 2010, will be fully implemented in the coming year.
“The journey therefore has been won, it has been paced, it’s been reflected, and we’ve had the opportunity to look at the issues and address them, to bring together the various technologies… all in the interest of improving quality,” he said.
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