DIRECTOR of operations at the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) Dr Nicole Manning is urging education leaders across the region to work together in an effort to improve performance in external examinations.

According to Manning, the regional performance of students in the May-June 2026 sitting of the assessments trended above last year with some territories doing far better than others.

Unveiling the figures during a results ceremony from Anguilla on Tuesday morning, Manning said, “regional percentage of acceptable grades have gone up a notch again” for the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE) which shows 93.52 per cent of overall candidates receiving acceptable grades.

At the same time she said the regional standing for the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) painted a slightly different picture but was still a good story with the overall performance standing at 72.18 per cent — a slight increase over 2025-2026.

Manning, who spoke only to the five top performing subjects in the largest cohorts for CAPE, said Caribbean studies emerged on top with students from 10 territories receiving acceptable grades between 98 per cent and 100 per cent.

She pointed out that there were territories where all candidates received acceptable grades, five territories fell below the regional level, scoring 91 per cent to 97 per cent which she said was “still very, very, very good”.

Manning added that the regional performance for information technology, units one and two, environmental science units one and two, physics, entrepreneurship, and communication studies were also impressive as she urged “territories to compare your results with regional percentage and… work together to see how we can pull each other up together”.

For CSEC, Manning said the top performing subjects were information technology, principles of business, English A, and human and social biology.

She said CSEC subjects performing at or below the overall regional performance were principles of accounts — 72 per cent with six territories scoring between 41 to 70 per cent — and chemistry, which she said stood at 68 per cent regionally with 15 territories above the acceptable grade level and six below.

Manning noted that social studies “has taken a hit this year generally” with territories doing as low as 44 per cent but as high as 100 per cent.

She said performance in mathematics showed slight improvement with the regional percentage being 42 per cent — a four per cent increase over the previous year.

Students doing their exam inside a classroom

“This is a good story. I don’t want anybody to be crying because any improvement in maths is a good improvement. It’s important for us to be happy about that. Any improvement is improvement and so 14 territories had 43 per cent to 77 per cent and seven territories had between 30 per cent and 38 per cent,” she disclosed.

In the meantime, Manning said a big concern of the council remains absenteeism. She said while CAPE saw an increase in both the subject and candidate entries, CSEC saw a reduction in the number of candidate entries but an increase in the subject entries. However, 3,534 candidates did not show up for CAPE, while 32,403 were missing for CSEC.

“Now what does this mean for candidates? A candidate who is absent has no opportunity to be graded because they have missed a component and cannot be graded,” Manning said.

“It is something that the Caribbean Examinations Council is concerned about and we are working very hard to encourage our candidates to turn up. Parents, guardians, turn up. We are encouraging our educators to encourage these students to turn up. We have done many surveys and the surveys tell us that sometimes candidates just feel that they’re unprepared and decide not to turn up. This is not a reason to be absent. Just try. As we say, nothing beats a trial but a failure,” Manning implored.

She also noted that absenteeism for the Caribbean Certificate of Secondary Level Competence exams, a foundational secondary-school qualification offered by the council, “is a worrying concern too”.

The CXC director of operations, said the entity has been trying to decipher the causes behind students not showing up and pointed out that the non-submission of internal coursework component (school-based assessments or SBAs) by both the centres and the candidates is a factor.

“We are seeing an increase in the non-submission by candidates while somewhat a little steady on the non-submission by centres. But both are worrying for us… because non-submission of SBAs, or not doing a third paper, or any other component for that matter, is going to make the candidate ungraded,” Manning pointed out.

“Similarly for CSEC the same thing happens and this is even more worrying because this is actually increasing, for whatever reason,” Manning added as she appealed to regional ministries of education to impress upon “candidates, parents, community” the importance of sitting every single component.

Meanwhile Manning, who last year lamented an “an all-time high of 80 irregularities” among students who sat the 2025 May-June external examinations, on Tuesday said the 2026 May-June sitting had seen “a whopping 128” irregularities. In those cases, grades are either cancelled or candidates disqualified.

“The top three issues we had this year were: the use of unauthorised devices – this represented the largest instance reported; collusion where candidates are trying to work with each other in an exam to complete the exam; and thirdly, use of unauthorised material; and the new one on the block, AI misuse. We have never had this before.

This is new,” Manning told the gathering while encouraging ministries to utilise the artificial intelligence standards and guidelines produced by the council to educate students about responsible use of the technology.