Officials of the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) said grade changes made for some students who wrote the CAPE examination were the result of a pre-emptive quality control mechanism and there had been a “deliberate update of information” on the site where the results were released.
This was the explanation offered following complaints from parents and students that result slips given out by schools were completely different from what they saw when they checked the student portal on the day the results were released.
Responding to e-mailed questions from the T&T Guardian, Cleveland Sam, CXC’s Assistant Registrar for Public Information and Customer Service, said while candidates may have received the original results online, it is the corrected preliminary slips that will be reflected on their certificates and any transcripts issued by CXC.
“Corrective and preventive measures are being put in place to ensure that such discrepancies do not occur again,” he said.
Sam did not respond to questions about how the discrepancies occurred in the first place but pointed out that there was “a deliberate update of information on the site.”
Sam explained: “The protected core database is not the same database as the students’ portal space. Therefore, there is no chance of the CXC database being hacked from the students’ portal.”
He did not respond to questions about how the error occurred.
The proposed dates for the release of the results were changed twice by CXC, first from August 12 to August 15, then the actual results were released to the Ministry of Education on August 18 and students received them on August 22.
Within days of going to the students portal to access their results, some students were claiming their grades had changed. In some instances, the grades had improved while others received grades less than what they originally saw.
Parents said school officials advised them to file official queries with CXC but they have to pay for this procedure which is simply a recounting of the marks. Many have chosen to go this route, however, because entry into university is dependent on grades.
Economist and political analyst Indera Sagewan-Alli said her daughter was one of those affected and she wrote to Minister of Education Anthony Garcia and CXC Registrar Glenroy Cumberbatch on the matter but got neither an acknowledgement or response. She has since written a letter to the minister for publication in the press.
Sagewan Alli said she found it unacceptable that the issue was brought to the attention of Garcia three weeks ago but to date he has not acted on it. She said the issue requires the minister’s urgent attention even if it means making an emergency trip to Barbados to meet with CXC officials and she is prepared to hold a protest outside the minister’s office to get action.
Sagewan-Alli has also written to CXC demanding that her daughter’s papers be re-marked,
“The result does not reflect the work she put in and I have no faith that the marking process was fair,” she said.
Asked whether scripts can be remarked Sam said: “Candidates who receive results but are of the opinion that they should have received a better grade in the subject/unit, may request, through the relevant local examinations authority, a review of their scripts.”
Attorney Hilda Goodial has sent legal letters to the Education Minister and the CXC Registrar on behalf of a student who was affected but is yet to get a response. Her client got an ungraded mark in one subject but the grade was subsequently changed. Goodial said her client is also querying other grades.
Students at schools in north, east and central Trinidad were affected by the changes in grades.
Garcia confirmed that several principals had spoken to him about the grade changes and said the ministry had written to CXC asking them to send a delegation to discuss the matter. He could not say when that meeting will take place.
“If people lose confidence in CXC the students will suffer,” he said but it was a very sensitive issue and he does not want to say more until he gets an explanation from CXC.