From left: Zane Ramotar and Bhedesh Persaud, who topped for Guyana at the CAPE and CSEC examinations, respectively.
GEORGETOWN, Guyana--Guyana has secured the top spots in the Caribbean at the May-June 2020 sitting of the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) and the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations (CAPE), which are both administered by the Caribbean Examination Council CXC.
This announcement was made on Wednesday by the Education Ministry during a press conference to release the final examination results. The regional top performer for CSEC is Queen’s College’s (QC’s) Bhedesh Persaud, who secured 22 Grade Ones and one Grade Two.
Zane Ramotar, also of Queen’s College has emerged as the region’s top CAPE performer with 14 Grade Ones and one Grade Two passes.
Chief Education Officer, Dr. Marcel Hutson revealed that Guyana recorded improved pass rates at the 2020 examinations.
“Generally, Guyana would have done extremely well in terms of how our students have performed. And it is against that backdrop we cannot help but commend those teachers who fought vigorously even in the midst of all the issues. This could not have been possible without the help of all those stakeholders … We could not have done this without a solid team …,” he said.
CAPE
According to Dr. Hutson, a 93.16 per cent general pass rate was recorded at the May-June 2020 sitting of CAPE as compared to 93 per cent in 2019. The gender distribution of the overall CAPE pass rate was 36 per cent boys and 64 per cent girls. The results for CAPE are reported on a seven-point scale – Grades One to Seven.
Candidates attaining Grades One to Five have attained an acceptable standard for matriculation purposes, with Grade One representing excellent performance, while Grade Two and Three represent very good and good standards of performance, respectively.
For CAPE, students were offered units in 35 subject areas, and this year there was an increase in the number of candidates obtaining Grades One and Two passes.
CSEC
A total of 12,009 wrote the CSEC 2020 examinations as compared to 11,467 in 2019. The overall pass rate for Grades One to Three in 2020 was 75.9 per cent as compared to 73 per cent the previous year. Even though he described this as a marginal increase, Dr. Hutson noted that it was still commendable.
“… Because in the midst of COVID and all the drama and issues that were working against our students, we still see they were able to show that kind of improvement, even though marginal. And I think that is commendable. These children had to fight so many battles.”
Grades One to Three passes in English A remained constant with a pass rate of 77.91 per cent in 2020 as against 77 per cent in 2019. Pass rates for English B improved significantly from 58.1 per cent in 2019 to 78.03 per cent in 2020. A noted improvement was recorded in mathematics with a pass rate of 48.66 per cent in 2020 as compared to 43 per cent in 2019.
The release of the final May-June 2020 examination results was delayed by CXC after the examination body initiated a region-wide review of preliminary results that were released in September 2020. The review was started after students across several countries made a formal request for their grades to be rechecked, owing to discrepancies.
The Council had committed to complete the process by January 2021, but this failed due to the coronavirus lockdown, which affected its Barbados headquarters. By January 2021, a majority of the reviews had already been completed and CXC began posting final grades via its online portal. ~ iNews Guyana ~
