Georgetown – Guyana emerged at the top of this year’s Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations (CAPE), Director of Operations at the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC), Dr Nicole Manning announced on Thursday.
The examination body made the official announcement of the 2021 CAPE and Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) results at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre.
“Overall, Guyana’s (CAPE) performance was marginally higher compared to the rest of the region,” Dr Manning said. “We had 16 units of which 100 per cent candidates received Grade 1 to Grade 5.”
Grade 1 to Grade 5 are considered passes in CAPE, while Grade 1 to Grade 3 are considered passes in the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) exams.
Guyana also received high pass rates in the latter exams.
Dr Manning indicated that 70 per cent of students were able to attain Grade 1 to Grade 3 passes.
For this year, there were two sittings of examinations – June to July for the region and a separate sitting for the St Vincent & the Grenadines cohort due to the unexpected eruption of the La Soufrière volcano on the island.
As some of the measures aimed at reducing the pressure on students, Dr Manning indicated there also a reduction in School-Based Assessments (SBAs) requirements by as much as 50 per cent in some instances.
CXC also reduced the requirements for specific subjects given COVID-19 restrictions such as oral examinations.
“For the first time we would have introduced a facility known as deferral who might have felt as if they were not ready to sit exams in 2021,” Dr Manning said.
“They had the opportunity to defer all or some of the subjects. We had also given them an opportunity, also for the first time ever, for students to deter submitting their SBAs until 2022.”
(CMC)
