Williams: CXC has to listen to its constituents
Published:Friday | April 29, 2022 | 12:11 AM
Jamaica has expressed satisfaction with the decision by the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) to acquiesce after pleas by Education Minister Fayval Williams for the regional authority to delay by three weeks the start of the exam period which was to begin next Monday.
Arguing that this year’s prospective candidates were still not ready for the exams, as a result of learning loss and challenges brought on by the pandemic since 2020, Williams had been lobbying for them to be rescheduled.
The CXC advised this week that examinations will now begin on May 23, and results released between late August and September.
“I know there are other countries that came on board across the region as well. CXC is our regional examining body. It’s ours. It’s our entity in the region. It is not foreign to us, so it has to listen to the voices of its constituents, and other countries came on board to express their concerns about their students as well,” Williams told The Gleaner on Thursday.
“At the end of the day, when you looked at how many students would have been disenfranchised in Jamaica, I think that weighed heavily on the minds of persons and we’re happy that, across the region, we were able to get to this point,” she added. “It’s not only a benefit for Jamaican students; it’s a benefit for all students across the Caribbean who will have additional time in order to [prepare to] sit their exams.”
Williams noted that not all countries were impacted to the same degree by the pandemic, as some were able to have their students resume face-to-face classes earlier than others.
“There are some countries that the students were not at home at all,” Williams said.
“We would have seen, from January, the difficulties that our students would have, because, remember, we did not come back in the full face-to-face until the first week of March of this year. And so, from January, we would have written to CXC outlining the results of surveys we would have done then with students. Since that January letter, we did two other surveys and we would have written again, and so forth,” she said.
Some educators, parents and students have welcomed the additional time to prepare for the tests.