COME 2026, Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) candidates doing assessments, particularly School-Based Assessments (SBAs), will be allowed to use artificial intelligence (AI).

Director of operations at the CXC Dr Nicole Manning, making the disclosure recently at the official ceremony to mark the release of the May/June 2025 Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate results in the Cayman Islands, said the change is one of the “key things” for that year.

The SBA is a set of assessment tasks/assignments/projects conducted in school, carried out by the student following guidelines provided by CXC and assessed by the teacher using criteria provided by CXC. The SBA score contributes to the candidate’s overall examination grade.

Dr Manning, however, emphasised that students will need to “abide by” a particular benchmark.

“It’s called the Standards and Guidelines for the Use of Artificial Intelligence in CXC’s assessment. It’s on the website. There are five standards and several components within the standards. It’s there to protect you as well as to help you to understand not only the students, their parents, but also teachers,” Manning stated

She said the development was a novel one, with CXC leading the pack in that regard.

“So instead of persons trying to find out how to use AI, we have shared even how to reference AI, something that could not be found anywhere at all. In fact, we worked with our credentialing bodies and that’s a conversation that is going on and persons are really feeling around. So we feel very good that we are able to offer this to the region and we are encouraging everyone to go through and to utilise it,” she said.

Manning, in the meantime, cautioned students on the use of personal data.

“It’s important to ensure that our students do not overshare personal information in particular, and secondly because data privacy is one big one, and the use of ethical in information,” she pointed out.

In the meantime, the CXC director of operations said further changes are pending as part of the digital transformation of the examining body.

“Come January 2026, the multiple choice exams will only be done electronically and for the paper twos and the paper threes, those will be done what we call hybrid, where the questions will be displayed on the computer and the students will write and this is a part in their answer booklet,” Manning explained.

Meanwhile, chief executive officer of CXC Dr Wayne Wesley, in an update on the generative regional AI policy for the secondary education system, said work is far advanced.

“The generative AI policy framework that we have developed, it has been completed, and we have circulated that to all ministries of education across the region, and we have invited them to work with us to develop their national policies. Those national policies are being worked on now,” Wesley said in response to questions from the Jamaica Observer.

“I know specifically we’re working with Anguilla as well as Grenada is looking at doing it, and St Lucia, who have indicated that they want us to help them work through their national policies. We’re hoping those national policies will be completed by December of this year for us to at least speak to,” he said.

He said CXC has also developed capacity in-house.

“We have four members of staff that we have trained [at the MBA level] in artificial intelligence and giving us the extra capacity to work with ministries, and we are making that resource available to the ministries of education across the region for those who are still working on their AI policy. But we are in the process of working with three member states right now who have indicated there are others who said they are actually just doing a couple things before they come to us, but they are also interested in working the standards and guidelines that we have developed,” he said.

Wesley said these have been circulated to all ministries and schools as well.

“It’s on the website and students and teachers have access to it to see what is it that we have allowed. So the next update that we’ll give on this hopefully will be us showing all member states that have completed their national policy, particularly for the secondary education school system,” he told the Observer.