Approximately 10 per cent of the students for whom the government and National Commercial Bank (NCB) paid exam fees for prescribed subjects at CXC, failed to turn up for this year’s exams.

And, of those who sat the tests, half did not get a passing grade, data from the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) suggests.

But while the no-show rate of 14.45 per cent for Principles of Accounts (POA) and Principles of Business (POB) – the subjects for which NCB pays exam fees for Jamaican students – is twice that for English and Math, the core subjects in which the government takes up the tab, the pass rate is substantially higher among students supported by the bank, the figures show.

However, education officials warned last night that such information had to be interpreted with caution, given the substantially larger amount of students who sit English and Math, compared to the business subjects.

“It is a relative handful of students who sit POA and POB relative to those who do English and Math,” a senior education source said last night. “So I would be circumspect with any off-hand analysis of what the numbers are saying.

You have to look at them carefully.”

Senior officials of NCB were not immediately available for comment, so it was not immediately clear whether the company maintained a long-term commitment to the project and how the scheme is reviewed.

The bank’s owner, the Jamaican-born Canadian billionaire, Michael Lee Chin, announced the bank’s decision to pay the costs of children sitting POA and POB in the secondary exams as part of a broader education initiative that included the allocation of one per cent of the earning the NCB’s proprietary credit card, Key Card, to a range of education projects.

NCB chose to support students writing POA and POB for the fact that as business-related subjects they sat easily with Lee Chin’s intention of promoting entrepreneurship.

The government followed Lee Chin’s initiative announcing its 2003 budget that would pay the fees for students sitting Math and English and Information Technology.

It is estimated that between them, the government and NCB pay out upwards of $25 million to the Barbados-based CXC to cover the examination fees in the sponsored subjects.

The full data for IT was not immediately accessible, but according to figures for the other four subjects, 102,104 students signed up for the exams in June.

Of these 9,715, or 9.5 per cent, did not show up for the test.

Of 92,389 students who set the exams in the four reviewed subjects, 45,164 or 49 per cent passed, that is, they received between grades one and three.

With regard to the two business subjects, POA and POB, 27,179 students registered for the exam, but over 3,900 or 14.5 per cent did not sit the test. However, of the 23,250 who did, just under 16,000, or 69 per cent, received passing grades.

Registration was slightly higher (8,265) for POB than for POA (7,699).

In the case of Principles of Accounts, approximately 17 per cent of the students were no-shows, but of those who turned up, 67 per cent received passing grades. Absenteeism for POB was 12 per cent and the pass rate was 70 per cent.

Comparatively, 74,945 students signed up for English and Math, and approximately eight per cent of them did not show. Of the little over 69,000 who actually sat the tests, under half of them – 45.6 per cent – received passing grades.

In the case of the English Language exam, under six per cent of the more than 38,000 students stayed away. Of those who wrote the exam, 54 per cent passed.

In Math, 10 per cent of the 36,744 students failed to show, and of those who did, a little over 12,000, or 36 per cent, received passing grades.

The results, though still poor, are better than 2004 in the core subjects when only 25.9 per cent passed Maths and 39.6 per cent bested the English tests.

No one, it appears, has a handle on why such a large chunk of students appear to be staying away from the CXC’s secondary school exams. An official at Jamaica Overseas Examination Office confirmed that no such study has ever been done.

“Some people just don’t prepare and don’t bother to go,” the official offered. “Some people fall ill . There are the eventualities that occur between the date of entry which is in November and when they sit the exams in June. A lot of things can happen between then.”

editorial@jamaicaobserver.com