Stephen Vasciannie EXACTLY A year ago, I wrote a series of articles in The Gleaner about the performance of students in the CXC Examination, noting, among other things, the substantial gap between results for traditional high schools and upgraded secondary schools (July 22, July 29, August 5, 2002).
That series prompted no small number of responses, ranging from the relatively minor (e.g., that the name of the examination is now the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate, or CSEC) to the serious (e.g., that in the case of Alpha Academy, the primary information was incorrect).
In looking at examination performance for this year, I am once again placing reliance on the excellent publication of the National Council on Education entitled Performance of Jamaican Students in the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) 2002. The publication, prepared by Grace Munroe, Consultant, and Ruth R. Morris, Executive Director of the National Council on Education, contains statistics on school performance for 18 subjects, and once again, provides a good opportunity for ranking schools by final performance.
I retain the title CXC as this is used by the National Council in its publication, and because this is still how the examinations are popularly known. No doubt, with further publicity and with the passage of time, the distinction between CSEC (the examination taken mainly by Grade 11 students) and CAPE (the examination taken by students in Grades 12 and 13) will become generally known. CXC is still the term popularly used for the examination taken mainly by Grade 11 students, the old-time Ordinary Level Examination.
INPUT/OUTPUT
In the course of the discussions last year, many people were keen to point out that the output from various schools was directly related to the input concerning student intellect and preparedness for secondary school. This, of course, is a valid point: some schools, for example, Campion and Immaculate, naturally attract the strongest students from Kingston and St. Andrew coming out of the GSAT Examination. Down the road, then, in the CXC, one should expect strong results from these schools.
Conversely, where an Upgraded School receives many students with problems of literacy and numeracy at the Grade Six level, teachers will have a Herculean task in bringing candidates up to speed by the time of the CXC. So, then, the tables concerning performance set out below are not necessarily a measure of the contribution of teachers in particular schools. Rather, they give an indication of the final performance of students in the CXC Examination. The tables do not give a measure of value added over five years; they just give a snapshot of the position at the end of the five years.
In formulating the tables based on the data from the National Council on Education, emphasis is placed on performance in English Language and Mathematics. These are the gateways to many other subjects, and should, in my view, be compulsory components of every school's curriculum.
SCREENING
I have also converted some of the figures of the National Council on Education: the Council's final figure for examination performance does not, in my view, fully take into account the effect of screening on the English Language and Mathematics Examinations. If we assume that English Language and Mathematics should be compulsory courses, then all students in the eligible cohort should take these subjects, and where they do not, we can further assume that some students have been "screened out" because they are perceived by their schools as not having a realistic chance of success. My calculations assume that such students have not passed the CXC, and includes them in that way.
Most of the schools in the top 20 last year, have remained in place this year. The top three for English Language, Campion, Immaculate and Westwood, are unchanged; Morant Bay High, DeCarteret, Knox, Queen's and Meadowbrook, which were in the top 20 last year have been replaced by Mount Alvernia, Kingston College, York Castle, Glenmuir, and Manning's. Mount Alvernia's apparently meteoric rise can be explained on the basis of good performance for 2002, but it should also be noticed that for 2001, less than 50% of the eligible cohort had taken CXC English Language, thus ruling them out of consideration from the tables last year.
In the case of Alpha Academy, the number of students sitting the examination actually exceeded the eligible cohort, so I have used the actual number of students taking the examination as the base for calculating percentage passes. For all other schools in the top 20 for English Language, I have used the eligible cohort as the base for calculations. So, for instance, at Campion, 197 students sat the examination, and 196 passed (99 per cent); but as the eligible cohort was listed as 201, the percentage pass rate is 98 per cent (i.e., 196 divided by 201, as a percentage).
When compared with 2001, St. Hugh's, St. Hilda's, Manchester High, Camperdown and Marymount have been replaced in the top 20 by Hampton, Morant Bay, Calabar, Cornwall and Mount Alvernia. Of the schools in English Language, Kingston College, Alpha Academy, Hampton and Bishop Gibson sent up more candidates than their eligible cohort.
To put the matter mildly, performance in CXC Mathematics leaves much to be desired: this can be seen from the fact that the school in 20th position in Jamaica for 2002 had a pass rate of 41 per cent in Mathematics. More generally, only 44 per cent of all students eligible to take Mathematics did so, and only 36 per cent of these passed the examination. Bearing in mind the place of Mathematics in commerce, science, and as the foundation for logical analysis, we should be very concerned.
Stephen Vasciannie is Professor of International Law at the University of the West Indies, Mona, and consultant in the Attorney-General's chambers.
