EDUCATION Minister Fayval Williams on Monday said while “improvements” have been noted in the performance of Jamaican public school students in the 2024 Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE), the ministry is concerned about the achievement of students in the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examination, with particular dissatisfaction over the mathematics results.

“For this year, of the total CAPE subject entries, 43,661, or 95 per cent were sat with an average pass rate of 90 per cent,” Williams said Monday during a press briefing to unveil the preliminary results.

While noting that the final revised data set and analysis could result in either increased, decreased, or unchanged grades, the education minster said CAPE Unit 1 had 31,783 subject entries of which 30,136 or 95 per cent were sat, a pass rate of 90 per cent, while Unit 2 had a 91 per cent pass rate. Williams said the results for CAPE Units 1 and 2 for 2024 did not show significant percentage variations from those of 2023. She also said there was improvement in 13 subject areas in Unit 1 and 16 subject areas in Unit 2.

For the 2024 CSEC exam results, however, some 33, 235 students from public schools were registered to sit the exams of which 31,660 or 95.3 per cent sat.

The education minister, in noting that the data showed that there have been fluctuations in the regional performance in key subjects specifically for maths and English A, said Jamaica had “recorded a decline”. The education minister was keen to point out that the comparison was being done between the 2022 and 2024 performance, given that there had been exam breaches in 2023, which led to CXC modifying its grading scheme for that year.

“We would not encourage a comparison with the 2023 exam; the best year for comparison would be 2022. In maths for 2022 the score was 37.3 per cent with 38.9 for 2024, a 1.6 percentage point difference; we here at the ministry will have to redouble our efforts for maths,” Williams said, noting that even based on the comparison with that year the ministry was still not satisfied with the performance of students in the maths exams.

Where the performance in English language was concerned she said while the pass rate was “commendable” education officials would want to see it move higher. Exam passes for English language for 2022 was recorded at 77.2 per cent and 76.4 per cent for 2024, a -0.8 percentage point difference.

“It is something we will be working on in terms of where we are in terms of passes with maths and English we have a lot of work to be done to get that figure up,” Williams said.

In the meantime, data showed that males outperformed females in eight subject areas for the 2024 CAPE exams — agricultural science, applied mathematics, biology, chemistry, financial services studies, French, history and tourism Unit 2.

For the 2024 CSEC exams, 18, 093 females were registered to sit the exams with 17,484 actually taking the exams. A total 15,281 females passed subjects. At the same time, 15,142 males were registered to sit the exams with 14,176 actually taking the exams. A total 11,653 males passed the subjects taken.

Overall, 31,660 students sat the exams. Of that number, 26,934 passed the subjects taken.

The exams were administered in May and June this year.