KINGSTON, Jamaica — Principals are being encouraged to utilise the Caribbean Examinations Council’s (CXC) School-Based Assessment (SBA) Concession, which is being offered to all Jamaican students for the May/June 2026 sitting.

The document outlines the components that can be removed from the process if a candidate is redoing his or her SBA.

Candidates have three or four months remaining to complete their SBAs in order to meet CXC’s extended teacher submission deadline of June 15.

“Consider every detail that’s in this document and try as hard as possible to allow the students to complete the school-based assessment,” urged Director of Operations, Dr Nicole Manning, during Wednesday’s  CXC press conference, held at the Overseas Examinations Commission (OEC), in Kingston.

She advised that the document is only valid for use in Jamaica and will be made available to schools through the Ministry of Education, Skills, Youth and Information and should not be shared externally.

Noting that SBAs are completed over a two-year period at the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) level, Dr Manning said CXC is aware that some candidates have completed their SBAs.

“In fact, the principals did indicate in some instances that the candidates were very advanced for some schools, but we are also conscious that students lost their SBAs through water, they lost their homes and other things. We had to take that into consideration as a part of our duty of care,” she said, referring to the devastating impact of Hurricane Melissa on October 28.

Meanwhile, she indicated that CXC is also offering a concession in relation to the number of labs that need to be completed for science subjects.

“In the past, we had, say for example, 16 labs for physics. It may be reduced to, we would say, a minimum of eight. But, you do have guidelines as to what you need to do in line with completing those labs,” Manning said.

— JIS