KINGSTON, Jamaica— Registrar and Chief Executive Officer  of the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC), Dr Wayne Wesley, says that requests by candidates for queries and reviews should be submitted to the examination body by October 23.

He said queries regarding absent and ungraded results are free, but there is a fee for reviews.

Wesley was speaking recently at a virtual press conference to provide clarity on concerns raised following the release of the preliminary results for the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE) and the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC).

Ministries of Education from across the region have written to the Barbados-based examination body regarding candidates’ dissatisfaction with this year’s grades.

Dr Wesley noted that apart from the representation made by the education ministries, CXC has received no formal complaints from students.

He said that the concerns being raised about students’ grades in this year’s exams are not reflected in the results.

In fact, he said that the performance of candidates across the region shows an overall improvement in both CAPE and CSEC, at 93 per cent and 79 per cent, respectively.

He noted that at the CAPE level, a total of 21, 243 candidates received grade one, which is an increase over the 21, 696 students, who earned that mark in 2019, and much more than what obtained in 2018 and 2017.

For CSEC, 95, 485 students received a grade one score, which is higher than what obtained in 2017 at 78, 841; 81,000 in 2018; and 84, 565 in 2019.