By: Precious Mills
BASSETERRE, St.Kitts ( Thursday 16th August 2018) – While education officials have marked an improvement in CXC (Caribbean Examination Council) results so far according to preliminary results, areas of concern include School Based Assessments (SBAs), irregular class attendance and low number of passes for Integrated Science at high school level.

“Parents, guardians and teachers need to respond more seriously to students’ completion of their SBAs, their attendance at regular classes as well as those additional classes that are put on by teachers to support students,” said Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education William Hodge at a press conference organised by the Ministry of Education yesterday afternoon (Wednesday) at Government Headquarters on Church Street.

He added: “We have to encourage our students to complete their SBAs-all of them-and on time, to use the feedback that their teachers provide to improve the quality of their SBAs so that when they are graded for submission to CXC that they would have the maximum scores possible.”

According to Chief Education Officer Tricia Esdaille: “Looking at some of our reports and hearing the results, as always there’s always room for improvement. I think when we look at the scores in St.Kitts and Nevis and we look at the regional performance that St. Kitts and Nevis continues to perform very well and our goal is to compete against ourselves to do better every year in hopes that next year we would have greater improvement than we’ve seen this year.”

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education Shawn Richards gave a summary of the performance in private schools and centers as it relates to CSEC (Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate).

“At this point in time, these results are preliminary. Throughout the next few weeks, there are some students who would query their grades [and] that of course would affect the percentages which were given. Additionally, there were some students who were ungraded and so those results are still being awaited a fluctuation in terms of percentages presented,” he remarked.

The CSEC preliminary results are: Basseterre High School 631 out of 754; Cayon High School 451 out of 553; Charles E. Mills Secondary; Charlestown Secondary 564 out of 715; Gingerland Secondary 251 out of 262; Immaculate Conception Catholic School 182 out of 231; Nevis International Secondary 30 out of 37; Saddlers Secondary School 235 out of 284; Verchilds High 457 out of 525; Washington Archibald High School 794 out of 1010; St. Kitts Private candidates 328 out of 620; New Horizons Rehabilitation Centre 10 out of 10; Nevis Private 125 out 204; Her Majesty’s Prison 11 out of 19 and also the Clarence Fitzroy Bryant Adult and Continuing Education 49 out of 64.

Top performers hail from BHS namely Zidane Knight with 13 grade one and 1 grade two and Abion Stevens (11 grade ones and 2 grade twos).

As highlighted by Richards, for the May to June 2018 CXC examinations, 16000 candidates registered for 70000 subject entries in the region. Of that amount, 15000 wrote their multiple choice exams on the computer.

He said for CSEC, within the Federation, 1461 candidates wrote 5718 examinations-754 school candidates and 707 private candidates.

“Of that amount, 4801 entries were students in schools and the remaining 917 subject entries from private candidates. Acceptable grades returned, that is grades one to three, were 4469. Of that amount, schools returned 3946 and 523 for private candidates. 21 of the 31 subjects returned a passing grades of 81 % or higher,” he noted.
The Education Minister pointed to a science subject saying: “Of concern is Integrated Science which returned 94 passes out of 237 (39.66 %).”

Richards went on to say: “Visual arts which returned 18 out of 37 passes (48.65%) after seeing gradual improvement the past two years.”

He also shared that the “School Based Assessment (SBA) component was introduced for the first time this year for English A and English B (which is Literature) and Mathematics.
Returns in school are: English A- 439 subject passes out of 546 (80.40%), English B- 57 passes out of 63 (90.48 %) and Mathematics returned with 327 passes out of 500 entries 65.40 %).