The Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) has extended the deadline for candidates to register for its June 2010 exams by two weeks, as it continues to iron out kinks in the newly implemented Online Registration System (ORS).
In a press release CXC said the decision was taken following consultations with stakeholders in CXC participating territories, some of whom have encountered challenges with the ORS. The ORS was introduced in May. It allows schools to register candidates online for the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSES) and the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE) both of which are administered by CXC. The ORS replaces the Student Information Registration System which was computer-based but not web-based. The user interface for both systems is very similar.
CXC said over the last three weeks it has received several complaints from schools and some ministries about the functioning of the ORS which prompted it to extend the deadline for registration for the May/June 2010 exams. The council said two major challenges users faced were bandwidth availability and bottlenecks at peak periods. Since then it has worked with its Internet Service Provider to expand the bandwidth to alleviate some of the bottlenecks and an additional web server was deployed. CXC said it is also prepared to deploy additional back-end servers if required to address any further bottleneck issues.
The council said last weekend it tuned the database queries to boost the system’s performance, thereby reducing significantly the number of persons experiencing challenges within the system. CXC has also made training videos available for download from its website located at www.cxc.org which instructs users in the proper use of the software. It said too it is doing everything possible to minimise the challenges associated with the ORS and it is confident that when the hurdles have been ironed out the ORS will make candidate registration a smooth and efficient process.
