BELIZE CITY, Thurs. Aug. 13, 2020– As promised, the Caribbean Examination Council rolled out their CSEC and CAPE exams in July of this year, despite the interruptions of classes that had been caused by COVID-19. On Wednesday, the Registrar and CEO of the Council, Dr. Wayne Wesley, issued a virtual address thanking all Ministries of Education, local registrars, teachers, invigilators, and center staff for their assistance in the successful administration of these exams.
Due to the new social restrictions caused by the pandemic, the Council was tasked with finding a new strategy to facilitate all students of the Caribbean in advancing to a higher level of education, despite the various academic hardships that they were facing since March, when the pandemic hit the Caribbean.
This new strategy consists of a different way of administering, marking and grading the CSEC and CAPE exams as well as CVQ’s. This approach included the administration of one common paper, which is known as Paper 1, comprised of multiple choice questions, which is complemented by School Based Assessments (SBA’s), or the alternative to SBA’s, known as Paper 2, for private candidates.
Because Paper 2 was not administered, grading was based more on “equivalence”, as explained by Dr. Wesley:
“Equivalence means that from year to year, candidates who earn the same grade demonstrate the same level of performance. The determination of grades will be modeled to account for the performance according to the candidate’s competence on each profile. There is no adjustment to weighting of papers since the modified approach being used excluded paper two. The trends in teacher predications over the previous years will be used to determine if the grade awarded is fair to the candidates,” said Wesley.
Dr. Wesley went on to state that the Council is confident that the grades obtained by students this year are in line with the performance trends in previous years and candidates being awarded for a high performance in the 2020 exams will have “characteristics and performance” on the multiple choice and SBA papers that are similar to those of candidates from the previous years. Wesley therefore concluded with an assurance to all parents, teachers and administrators of the Caribbean that grades this year will be valid, fair and have equal status to the grades obtained by students in the previous years.
To those territories whose students were affected to the point of not being able to sit the exam, those students will be allowed to sit their examinations at the next available sitting free of charge.