The release of the 2026 Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) results provides Jamaica and the wider Caribbean with reason to celebrate, but also an opportunity to pause and examine what the numbers are really telling us about teaching, learning, and assessment.

At the regional level, the results show modest but encouraging progress. The overall Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) pass rate increased to 72.18 per cent, while mathematics — the perennial challenge across the region — rose to 42 per cent, up from 38 per cent the previous year. English A remained relatively strong at 80 per cent. These improvements are encouraging, although they should be viewed as progress rather than evidence that the region has solved its long-standing educational challenges.

Jamaica’s results are similarly worthy of recognition. Students recorded improvements in 18 of the 34 CSEC subjects, with mathematics recording one of the more notable gains. The country’s mathematics pass rate increased to 48.7 per cent, continuing a three-year upward trend and placing Jamaica above the regional average. The education ministry has linked some of this progress to targeted interventions, including teacher training, mentorship, and programmes developed with education partners.

This is important because it demonstrates what can happen when weaknesses are identified and interventions are deliberately targeted. We should, therefore, commend our students, teachers, school leaders, parents, and education stakeholders whose collective efforts have contributed to these gains.

However, celebrating improvement should not prevent us from asking more difficult questions. English A, for example, remained a strong area of performance in Jamaica, but the pass rate declined from 85 per cent in 2025 to 83.6 per cent this year. This is hardly a crisis, particularly since Jamaica remained above the regional average, but it reminds us that examination performance does not always move in one direction.

More importantly, the circumstances surrounding this year’s examinations require us to interpret the results with some caution. Hurricane Melissa created an extraordinary disruption to Jamaica’s education system. Students and teachers were displaced, learning was interrupted, and schools in some of the hardest-hit communities faced significant challenges. In response, CXC activated its Regional Disaster and Business Recovery Protocol and gave schools in seven affected parishes — including Manchester, St Elizabeth, Westmoreland, Hanover, St James, Trelawny, and St Ann — the option of using a modified examination arrangement.

Under this arrangement, affected schools could use paper 1, together with the relevant school-based assessment or paper 03/02 component rather than the full traditional examination. Importantly, this was an option for affected schools, while others proceeded with the normal examination format. This distinction matters.

It would be unfair to suggest that students who benefited from the modified arrangement did not earn their results. They were operating under circumstances that were entirely outside their control, and the concessions were introduced precisely to ensure that students affected by a national disaster were not unfairly penalised.

At the same time, the different assessment circumstances raise a legitimate question about how we interpret and compare the results. What does it mean when students sitting the same qualification may have been assessed through different combinations of examination components? And how should policymakers interpret year-on-year changes when the conditions under which some candidates were assessed were not entirely comparable?

These are not questions about taking away from students’ achievements. They are questions about the responsible use of educational data. A student may perform differently across examination papers. Strong performance on one component can sometimes compensate for weaker performance on another. Consequently, when some candidates are assessed through a modified arrangement, it is reasonable for education planners to examine whether, and to what extent, the alternative assessment pathway influenced overall performance.

That analysis should not begin with an assumption that the modified approach inflated results. Neither should we assume that it had no effect. The responsible position is to examine the evidence. The education ministry has indicated that further analysis is being undertaken, including examination of performance by gender, parish, and the impact of Hurricane Melissa on students in affected communities. This is precisely the kind of analysis that should guide the conversation going forward.

There is also another development that could fundamentally change how we approach this conversation — CXC’s move towards modular assessment. The pilot of the Caribbean Targeted Education Certificate (CTEC) mathematics module 1 produced an encouraging result, with 88 per cent of the 2,535 candidates who sat the pilot achieving acceptable grades. But this statistic must also be interpreted correctly. Passing one module does not mean that a student has completed the entire mathematics qualification. Candidates must complete the remaining modules to obtain the full CSEC certification.

Nevertheless, the pilot raises an important possibility. If students can demonstrate mastery in smaller, focused stages, perhaps assessment can become more responsive to different learning needs without lowering academic standards. That possibility deserves serious consideration.

As CXC expands the modular approach, however, the principle must remain clear: Flexibility in assessment must not mean a reduction in standards. The credibility of CXC qualifications depends on ensuring that students who receive the same certification have demonstrated the required competencies regardless of the pathway through which they achieved it.

Ultimately, examination results should be treated as evidence, not as the entire story. A pass rate can tell us how students performed on a particular assessment. It cannot, by itself, tell us how much learning was lost, the quality of instruction received, the circumstances under which students prepared, or how effectively they can apply their knowledge beyond the examination room.

The 2026 results, therefore, give us two reasons to be encouraged. First, there is evidence that targeted interventions can produce improvement, particularly in areas such as mathematics. Second, the resilience of our education system was demonstrated during an extraordinarily difficult year.

But resilience should not simply mean surviving disruption. It should mean learning from it. Jamaica should document what worked during the Hurricane Melissa disruption and develop a comprehensive education emergency-response framework that can be activated during future disasters. Such a framework should address continuity of teaching and learning, assessment arrangements, student support, and the protection of examination integrity.

We should celebrate our students, we should commend our teachers and school leaders, we should acknowledge the support of parents and communities, but we must also be prepared to interrogate the data honestly.

Ricardo E Smith is a senior educator and social scientist. He is also principal director of the R Smith Scholars Institute. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer and ricardo.professional.edu@gmail.com.

Ricardo Smith