All-girls' schools hold top spots in CSEC rankings by Educate Jamaica
Published:Tuesday | July 21, 2015 | 12:00 AM
Six all-girls secondary schools have dominated the top seven spots in the latest Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) rankings put out by think tank Educate Jamaica.
While Campion College has eased its way to take the first-place ranking, up from second place in the previous rankings, it is the all-girls institutions that fill the remaining places in the top seven ranks.
Slipping one place down to second from the previous rankings is Immaculate Conception High School, moving up from a ranking of 13, Montego Bay High School now holds third place, while St Andrew High for Girls has claimed fourth place, up from its previous ranking of 10th.
Moving up one place each were Wolmer's High School for Girls and Westwood High, which now hold fifth and sixth place, respectively. Closing out the top seven is St Hilda's Diocesan High which has been knocked from the third place spot it held previously.
Schools in central Jamaica continue to make a good showing in the rankings with Glenmuir High and DeCarteret College holding on firmly to their eighth and ninth-place spots.
Schools with notable upward movements in the rankings include Wolmer's Boys School, which is now ranked 11th up from 15th.
Munro College comes in with a rank of 13th compared to a rank of 17th previously.
Ardenne High, Bishop Gibson High and Manchester High were the other schools which improved their rankings, moving from 19th to 15th; 22nd to 16th and 26th to 18th, respectively.
The rankings are based on the 2014 result of the CSEC examinations.
In the meantime Dr Dennis Minott, chief executive officer of AQuEst, who periodically publishes the Minott Report, has indicated that he is in the process of doing a multi-year analysis of CSEC results.
Minott said his analysis will give a more accurate representation of school rankings.
"We are about to start a new version of the report and are in the process of seeking sponsors ... . We will be doing a six or seven-year span (as) the snapshot thing that people do does not capture the true story and that is why we have not in the last three Minott Reports relied on one year," he said.
Minott went on to outline how his report is compiled.
"The Minott Report is a horizontal study and it looks at vertical things within the individual years and the analysis takes 10 of our brightest minds and involves working with about 24 computers that we link up to simulate a huge mainframe because of the type of study that we undertake," he said.
Minott indicated that he is in no rush to publish his report as he wants to ensure its accuracy.
"We do not sample. We take the entire caucus of the data because with the kind of capacity we now have it is possible to upload all of the CXC data and analyse them without what might be questionable sampling techniques and statistical methods so we not going to be spooked into rushing and then making wrong judgements about schools," he added.
He went on to raise concerns about anomalies in school rankings.
"Another thing is that almost nobody captures anything from the young people who do the CSEC exams early, for example, you find that some children from Cornwall College, Hampton, Ardenne and so forth encourage the young students to go and do their CXCs if they are ready. The effect of that is that it tends to result in a vast under reporting because some rankings do not include the students who are not in grade 11. In some schools, you have students doing CSEC exams from grade seven and CAPE exams from fourth and fifth form," he argued.