‘Lording over SBAs will not be allowed’ – Manickchand

Minister of Education Priya Manickchand says that all students heading into the examinations offered by the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) must be allowed to view their School-Based Assessment (SBA) grades before they sit the examination.

“We are still hearing complaints that students are not seeing their SBA grades before they go into exams,” the Education Minister said on Friday during the announcement of this year’s CXC results.

She called out teachers for “lording over” the results.

For the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) and Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations (CAPE), SBAs form a component of the grades that students ultimately receive.

These SBAs are done in the month leading up to the sitting of the examinations, and allow the students to engage in research, practical sessions and an application of the content learnt.

Last year, however, it was revealed that teachers’ failure to submit grades for students’ SBAs correctly led to ungraded CSEC and CAPE results.

At the press conference, Manickchand stressed that all students must receive these grades before they head into the examinations so that they would be able to gauge their performance and readiness beforehand.