CXC, A-Level results cause for concern

Tewarie said this in his address at the North Eastern College Graduation Exercise last Thursday, where he explained that some 60 percent of students who took the CXC exam failed to gain full certificates.

The CXC results showed that in 2005 out of a total of 127,257 individuals who wrote the examinations, only 21,147 passed five or more subjects.

In Trinidad and Tobago, of the 19,800 writing five or more subjects, only 7,884 passed with grades one to three and were therefore eligible to proceed to Advance Levels. In other words he said only 39.8 percent of students passed with a full certificate.

That means that 60 percent of students who took the CXC examinations failed to gain full certificates.

These statistics must be seen in the context of the continuing quantative and qualitative decline in the number of students obtaining passes as well as the continuing unsatisfactory results in English, Mathematics and Science subjects.

Likewise he said the results of the Advance Level do not give much comfort either. The number of students writing the examinations in Trinidad and Tobago rose from 6,067 in 2002 to 7,261 in 2004.

Of these, 3,881 or 53 percent of those who took the examination in 2004 passed two or more subjects. While this increase is welcome, he said we must note the failure rate of those taking the examination increased from 34 percent in 2002 to 46.6 percent in 2004.

Tewarie emphasised that these statistics must cause concern since they limit the numbers who can gain access to tertiary education.