Education Minister, Priya Manickchand has announced that this year’s Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) and the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE) will be held in June-July.
The Minister made this disclosure on Monday during the official opening of the Ministry’s Virtual Reinforcement Lessons for Hinterland Schools.
“This morning (Monday), we had a meeting with Council for Human and Social Development (COHSOD), the committee in the Caricom that deals with the education and it was specifically to look at what dates we will have CSEC and CAPE, what format the paper will take, and some other related issues,” she said.
As such, students who are preparing for these examinations can expect to do so under the established format which they are familiar with, where they would have to write both Papers One and Two. This includes a copy of their respective School-Based Assessments (SBA), or they can exercise the option to write Paper Three.
To this end, the Minister said the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) has decided to provide some broad topics on what Paper Two is expected to offer, at least five weeks before the exam.
“Now, we want to be careful with that because Paper One will still be the entire syllabus so while you get those broad areas five weeks before the exams, do not forget everything else, and do only those areas. Please make sure you understand those areas or where you need to know it in detail for Paper Two,” she added.
The Minister said there would also be other features that would be communicated concerning the 2021 examination. The new features, she believes, will help the students despite the challenges they are facing due to the COVID pandemic.
“CXC is going to announce and the Ministry will tell you through your school, very shortly, some additional features. You can write some of the exams this year for June and July, but you can postpone some at no cost, no further cost to yourself, and using the same SBAs from this year to January of next year.”
In February, the Ministry announced that it is still awaiting the completed review of the 2020 results of CSEC and CAPE. About 6251 subject entries from the 2020 exam were affected.
Of this sum, 1258 subject entries from 500 candidates were submitted to CXC for review. There are 128 reviews still outstanding. To date, following the review, 456 grades have been changed, while 674 have remained the same.
Schools’ reopening
On Saturday, Manickchand announced that Government is looking to have schools in Guyana fully reopened after the Easter holidays but in the meantime, classrooms will remain closed for the month of March, except for Grades 10, 11 and 12 students.
According to Manickchand, Health Minister Dr Frank Anthony has advised that schools continue to be closed to the traditional classroom learning in the new month.
Manickchand pointed out that her Ministry has not taken any decision without consulting with and the advice of Dr Anthony, who has been looking at ways that his Ministry can accommodate the return of classroom learning to the benefit of everyone involved, especially students.
In fact, she noted that this will become more a reality now that the Health Ministry has rolled out its COVID-19 vaccination campaign earlier this month.
“Once that goes smoothly and as plan, we anticipate that we’re going to be able to open schools sometime after the Easter holiday – not too long after. Please remember, while that is our intention and a desire, that would be dependent upon further advice of the Health Ministry about how well the vaccination programme happen, and how successful they were with the numbers they had anticipate they wanted to meet,” Manickchand said.
