600+ students failed at CSEC

Of 12,269 candidates who wrote the 2018 Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) Examinations, over 600 students did not get grades one to three passes in any subject area.

It was recently disclosed 11,000 pupils in the Caribbean obtained zero passes at the CSEC exams.

Chief Education Officer (CEO), Marcel Hutson during a press conference at the National Centre for Education and Resource Development (NCERD) on Friday noted that this is the first year that the Ministry is taking stock of those students who are left behind.

As such, he could not say whether the 600 students who did not pass is an increase or decrease from 2017.

However, he assured that the Ministry will do a complete analysis of the situation to reduce the failures.

“We’re going to do the disaggregation, isolate the schools and so we could recognize where we’ve had that issue but this is something new, we’re doing it for the first time and it is something that we will do going forward because we will like to see those numbers keep reducing,” the CEO told reporters.

On the other hand, a total of 233 candidates secured Grade Ones in eight or more subjects at CSEC.

An analysis of the results revealed that the overall pass rate for grades one to three was 69.1% compared to 63.68% in 2017.

Education Minister, Nicolette Henry said that there was improved performance in 16 subject areas including English and Mathematics.

English ‘A’ recorded a pass rate of 67.14% in 2018 compared to 57.99% in 2017.

English ‘B’ pass rate in 2018 is 78.6% as compared to 44.45% in 2017.

Mathematics also improved with a pass rate of 43.39% in 2018 as compared to 39.23% in 2017 while Additional Mathematics remained constant with a pass rate of 68.45% in 2018 to 68.61% in 2017.

As it relates to the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE), the overall pass rate in 2018 is 93.68%. This is an increase from 2017 where a pass rate of 92.57% was attained.

An increase was also noted in the number of candidates securing Grades I, II, III and IV passes, the Ministry said.

A total of 923 candidates from nine Secondary Schools and five Private centres wrote the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination in Guyana.