CSEC proposals

The Covid-19 epidemic has intruded into all departments of life, and education has not been exempt.  We are approaching the regional examination season in May and the question had arisen as to whether the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate exams would in fact be held.  Last week CXC announced that they would be, but in a modified form. In a release the Council stated that it was proposing a revised examinations strategy in order “to yield valid grades and minimize disruption to the education system during these unprecedented times.”

What this means in practice is that there will be one Multiple Choice Paper (i.e. Paper I) and no Paper II, which requires essay-type answers in some cases, and the application of reasoning skills. Final grades would be awarded on the basis of moderated School Based Assessments (or Paper 032 in the case of private candidates) and the Multiple Choice Paper.

CXC announced that there would be exceptions to this process, where candidates would be required to complete additional components. The subjects affected would be Modern Languages (Spanish, French and Portuguese); Human and Social Biology and Visual Arts.

The main justification for this offered by the Council was in order to reduce the administration’s processing time for the examinations, since it would be utilising the e-testing modality, both online and offline. As a consequence, grades could be released in a timely fashion which in turn would facilitate matriculation to higher education or allow access to employment. This, it said confidently, would minimise the disruption to the 2020-21 academic year.

Leaving aside, for the moment, whether CXC has been entirely frank about its motives for this decision, it must be said that the announcement was not received with unalloyed enthusiasm at this end of the Caribbean. General Secretary of the Guyana Teachers’ Union, Coretta McDonald told Stabroek News that the union was not accepting the proposal, and if there were to be some adjustment, it would be better if Paper II were used rather than Paper I.

“The whole exam is not going to be that credible,” she said.

She revealed that during a meeting held by CXC, three options were on the table, and the representatives of the various Caribbean countries who were present were of the collective view that the best one would be to postpone the exams until later in the year. No final decision, however, was taken at that time. Ms McDonald thought that a deferral would give students more time to prepare, and adverted to the fact that many parents had already spent huge sums of money on these examinations for their children, and that they therefore should be allowed to sit them.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the ineffective caretaker Minister of Education Nicolette Henry had no comment to make on the proposed changes, although a former minister, Ms Priya Manickchand was more forthcoming, describing them as “questionable.” Her view too was that waiting was the best option.

It is not even as if several of the students preparing for CSEC to whom this newspaper spoke were much in favour of the proposed exam format. Ms Jenika Thompson told us, “I think that it would be a disadvantage to us because with Paper One, it’s either you’re right or wrong but with Paper Two, you will have a chance to explain and if you don’t get the entire question right you could pull some marks…” Ms Githanjalie Prabudial of Leonora Secondary was of a similar view, saying “The Paper Two shows how much a student knows on his or her own; therefore, it should be necessary to grant the students a chance to prove their skills.”

One or two students were in favour of the proposals, but there were others who were very unsure about what the changes might involve. Ms Reana Rambharose of St Stanislaus College said she felt unprepared for this exam, and thought that many students would be at a disadvantage. “I have no clue how to prepare for this if the decision becomes final…” she said, while we quoted Ms Trina Persaud as expressing the view, “… the downside is that I have no idea what to expect in this Paper I, all my preparations have become invalid in some ways.” 

It was not just students who were uncertain about the proposals, but teachers too. An Information Technology teacher told this newspaper that her biggest concern was that students often passed Paper I but did not fully understand concepts and consequently could not apply these in life later on. For her part a Social Studies teacher expressed her reservations saying “Not all students can work Paper I and pass, it is a disadvantage to students who rely on answer explaining.”

It might be added that multiple choice questions are fairly meaningless in the case of some subjects.  To take but one example, it is History which is taught in schools, not Chronology, although clearly dates and basic facts are important. But testing whether an account of what happened in the past has been constructed according to the evidence which the children have read about, cannot be tested by multiple choice methods. Are we really testing the ability to comprehend, explain and reason in the proposed new arrangements, or simply rote learning?

In other words, how fair will the arrangements be to the students?

It was student Ms Brina Rai who perspicaciously remarked that the changes would only be beneficial to the markers, rather than students sitting the examinations. It should be noted that Paper II would require assembling markers from different territories to mark essay-type answers, and as Ms Manickchand correctly observed, Paper I can be marked online. CXC is no doubt taking into consideration the fact that some countries are denying entry to foreigners, even though they may be Caricom nationals, and that others have closed their international airports. Traipsing around the region at this point – even for examination purposes – is probably not a feasible proposition, even if the traditional markers were prepared to undertake the trip to Barbados, which they probably will not be. Apart from anything else, they would have no guarantee they could return home again. Look at the Jamaican students currently stranded in Barbados.

If the powers-that-be at CXC want to spare their markers, they apparently are not giving the same consideration to students, who will find it hard to observe social distancing rules in an examination setting. And will there be enough invigilators prepared to turn up and supervise the exams with all that entails, including the risk of contracting the coronavirus? One presumes that Paper I will be sent electronically to the various education departments, although what the plans are for what happens after the exam is over is something of a mystery.

But it is not just the issue of students congregating to sit exams which is a problem; as Ms Manickchand also pointed out, even in the circumstances of a pandemic, “People who have to write these exams feel … they have to go out and get some studying done, and that’s a dangerous thing.”  What CXC seems blithely to have ignored is the possibility that one or more member states could be in lockdown by May, and it would be impossible to hold exams in those places in any case.

As for the argument about not disrupting the academic year 2020-21, one can only say that that has probably already been disrupted in all the major western countries, and allowances will inevitably have to be made for late matriculation. Where employment is concerned, businesses have taken a severe hit, and have been laying off workers, not hiring them.  In other words, that situation in the region is not going to stabilise any time soon.

CXC needs to do the common-sense thing and postpone the CSEC exams.