Students granted UG, 6th Form entry under “temporary” arrangement

Annandale Secondary’s CSEC results

By Shemuel Fanfair

Even as the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) continues its investigation into the reported technical glitch that caused several students of the Annandale Secondary School to be issued with incorrect grades, the students are now being allowed to attend Sixth Form classes and the University of Guyana.

Guyana Times was on Tuesday informed that this was a temporary arrangement, pending the release of the actual results by CXC. When this publication called CXC’s Headquarters in Barbados, the Head of Examinations was at the time unavailable and could not be reached for a comment.

When contacted, Superintendent of Examinations, Sauda Kadir explained that the Education Ministry was collaborating with the Examination Council to ensure that the missing grades were sorted out. She could not, however, give a definite timeframe as to when the results would be likely released.

“It is collaborative effort between us and CXC, and we are working to get it completed in the shortest possible time,” Kadir told this publication.

On Sunday, acting Chief Education Officer (CEO) Marcel Hutson, pointed out that he could not definitively say when the error would be corrected. He assured that he has been employing strategies to ensure students could move forward with their studies.

“I can’t say definitively [when the students would get their results], but I told those responsible that we need those results… because our children are waiting those results to know how they would have performed from a holistic perspective,” Hutson recently told this newspaper.

It has been reported that a “technical glitch” was responsible for the students not seeing their correct grades. In some cases, students were seeing “ungraded” and others were not seeing results for some subject areas. It is still not yet clear just how many students have been affected.

Last week, parents of the affected students had called off a planned protest after they were told by the school’s management and operatives of the Education Ministry that the matter would have been resolved.

It was in August that Guyana Times first reported that many of the students were unable to obtain passes in certain subjects owing to the school’s alleged non-submission of the SBAs, but the Education Ministry later denied that this was the case.

“This is not a situation that the teachers did not do what they had to do, it was a technical glitch,” Hutson had indicated.

When this publication spoke to Education Minister, Dr Rupert Roopnaraine on the sidelines of the Education Month launch on September 1, he indicated that he would personally investigate the matter since, at that time, he was “not aware of the report”.

Guyana Times had further reported that the school’s teachers had received the requisite training in sending the SBA grades via the Internet to CXC, but they did not adhere to the deadline. This publication also reported that many of the secondary school students were disappointed since their grades, as published, had barred them from proceeding with their studies.