CXC reports high success rate for CTEC pilot exam

Students who wrote the modularised Caribbean Targeted Education Certificate (CTEC) registered an 88 per cent pass rate across the region. 

CTEC was developed to address the perennial under performance of students, especially in Mathematics. 

Jamaica is one of 15 territories that participated in the Mathematics pilot exam, with 1334 candidates, selected by schools and education ministries. Of the larger pool of 6,453 candidates under the pilot programme, 2,535 sat the 2026 May-June exam. 

During the Official Release of Results Ceremony in Anguilla Tuesday, CXC Registrar and CEO Dr. Wayne Wesley, announced that the Caribbean students are already seeing benefits, based on the results from module one, with 88 per cent achieving acceptable grades, “and across the entire Caribbean, only one candidate received the lowest grade.”

“Measured against a generation in which barely one in three candidates succeed in a typical sitting, a module is not a whole subject. The full qualification still requires completion of every module at the full standard. It is precisely what these results demonstrate. When learning is assessed in focused, a-achievable stages, our students do more than cope,” Dr Wesley said. 

CTEC is flexible, allowing students to study and be assessed in smaller, three stackable modules, which can lead to full CSEC certification. It is assessed at the same standard and uses the same syllabus as CSEC and CAPE but can be completed over a four year period. 

Approximately 35,000 standard CSEC candidates demonstrated mastery over the specific topics that make up module one of CTEC. This means that those students have also been awarded the CTEC Mathematics module one micro-credential alongside their standard results.