Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) Registrar and Chief Executive Officer Dr Wayne Wesley has assured that the Caribbean Targeted Education Certificate (CTEC) — the new qualification unveiled by the certification body on Tuesday — is not an attempt to water down its standards to cover for poor student performance.

The region’s premier assessment and awarding body, in unveiling sweeping changes which it says “marks the beginning of the end” of CXC “as we know it”, said consequent on CXC’s shift to become more flexible and responsive to the needs of the region, the new learner-centred qualification was developed.

“The new qualifications, one of the concerns we are seeking to address is that you have too many persons leaving the school system now without certification and it can’t be that students would have spent the better part of 18 years within the school system and end up leaving without any certification. So how do we begin to address that particular concern, and one of the response is through the CTEC,” Wesley said on Tuesday.

“We will be dealing with the learning style of the individual, the learning rate and the learning depth; how students learn, the pace at which they learn, and the amount of content that they can absorb at any one time. In that regard, we have recognised that there are multiple options; you have advanced gifted students who can take the accelerated track and those who can do so through a compressed programme. We also recognise that there are the typical students who will take the general track, completing a programme in a specified period of time as in most of our syllabuses [two years], and then you have the individual who will need a flexible track and extended programme time to treat with and absorb the content,” he explained further.

He said CTEC will be at the same standard of Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) and Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE); will utilise the same syllabus; will be focused on related and relevant learning outcomes; as well as provide for the progressive achievement of competencies and will be non-terminal.

“What CTEC is doing, is providing a level of flexibility to the system for persons; regardless of their own particular circumstance that caused them to either leave school earlier than planned or any difficulty in covering certain content, they can now manage that content over a period of time. Hence, this certification. It’s not lowering the standard, it is the same level of CSEC and CAPE. CTEC will be at O’Level; we are using the same syllabus, so we are not changing the standard,” the exam chief stated.

“What we have innovatively done is to pull these out into manageable components as modules within a particular subject and allow students to focus on a particular module at a particular time. That focus will still allow them to achieve the full CSEC certification, hence module 1 provides for stackability. You start with module 1, move to module 2 and then module 3, you obtain the full certification; but if for some reason you are not able to continue within the school system and you have to leave, you can leave with something rather than this all-or-nothing situation,” he added.

“You have a basis on which you can re-engage. Because right now, as it is, if you did not achieve CSEC mathematics, for example, you have to start all over again to write the subject. Now, if you have completed module 1, you can re-engage the system at module 2,” he explained.

“The other level of flexibility that exists is that a student might be pursing the sciences or engineering or construction and they want something in business, let’s say entrepreneurship, they can now do that module in entrepreneurship and be able to apply that to their engineering field without having to do the entire syllabus for business. So that’s the idea behind CTEC, why we are putting it forward as one of the solutions to deal with the challenges facing the secondary school system,” the CXC head told the briefing.

Last year only 58.18 per cent of candidates achieved passes in five or more subjects, including mathematics and English. Furthermore, only 36 per cent of the total candidates passed the mathematics CSEC exam, with pass rates fluctuating between 34 per cent and 43 per cent from 2021 to 2023. The poor performance was, however, attributed to the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tuesday Wesley said CXC was expecting to see “a lot more improvement” in the maths performance with the CTEC approach.

“We are taking a research-based approach… and so, from the primary level we are treating with the issue of numeracy and literacy because if those foundational skills are acquired early enough then obviously, when they get to the upper level of the secondary school system to begin to write these eternal examinations then they are in a position to do so, and to that end we have developed a set of standards that will be applied at the lower secondary school system and the primary level to ensure students get the foundation required in literacy and numeracy to be able to take on what obtains at the upper level of the secondary school system,” he stated.

A pilot of the CTEC certification will begin in September 2025, with the first certificate to be awarded in 2026 when the first set of students will be writing that examination.