Ree-Anna Robinson, Public Relations Officer for the National Secondary Students' Council (NSSC)
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Ree-Anna Robinson, Public Relations Officer for the NSSC
The leading representative body for students in Jamaica's high schools is seeking clarity on the Caribbean Examinations Council's announcement that an Independent Review Team will examine concerns raised about the regional exam body's grading system.
The National Secondary Students' Council (NSSC) says details are needed regarding how the review will be conducted.
CXC Chairman Sir Hilary Beckles announced the independent review on Monday, following complaints across the region about discrepancies in grades received by exam candidates.
Ree-Anna Robinson, Public Relations Officer for the National Secondary Students' Council, says there are several issues the student body wants CXC to address.
She says students have been requesting a manual remark of the papers, free of cost, noting that was not clear from in the announcement how the papers will be marked, neither said whether the same fees (applicable in ordinary circumstances) would be attached.
"We would like to know what is going to take place and "We would like for a free manual remark of this paper because we don't believe that students who would have paid 100 per cent of their exam fees and only sat 50 per cent of their exam to now go and pay for a remark of their (CXC's) mistake. Another issue is the timeline, because students need these grades now to fill out their applications for universities, which start as early as October, and October is next week," she insisted.
She explained that the deadlines have serious implications for further studies as some students who are bound for universities "have lost their scholarship opportunities due to this mistake."
In addition, she argued that the situation warrants a "detailed report on the weighting of the components of the paper (and) explanation as to how the grades will be arrived at regarding the profiles," considering the grading system used due to the pandemic had never been used before.
Miss Robinson said the National Secondary Students' Council has received extensive feedback and collected relevant data from almost 600 students through its network, which it will pass on to the Ministry of Education as well as the Overseas Examination Commission.
She vowed the NSSC will be following up the situation closely.
"...We are seeing what they're saying, the fact that they would want to have a review, that they would like to maintain public trust, all of these nice things. We would like to see the follow through...and we are looking to see what's really going to happen. But we will not be taking it sitting down," she asserted.
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