CXC, The Caribbean Examination Council has reported at the beginning this week that the regions’ “Overall performance in the 2013 May/June Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examination improved when compared with that of 2012. Sixty-five per cent of subject entries achieved acceptable grades – Grades I – III, compared with 62 per cent in 2012.
Additional Mathematics, which was offered for the first time last year saw improved performance at its second sitting this year – 70 per cent of the entries achieved Grades I-III, compared with 58 per cent at the first sitting.
While there was a slight improvement on Mathematics over last year, performance remained below average with 35 per cent of entries achieving acceptable grades, compared with 33 per cent last year. “The work produced by the majority of the candidates on Paper 02 was unsatisfactory,” the Subject Awards Committee reported. The Committee noted that more than 13, 000 candidates were unable to measure and state the length of a given line and determine the measure of an angle on one question.
This year, performance improved on 21 of the 35 subjects offered, including the two English and two Mathematics subjects. English A saw a 10 per cent improvement in performance with 57 per cent of entries achieving Grades I – III compared with 47 per cent last year; while for English B there was a five per cent improvement with 73 per cent achieving acceptable grades compared with 68 per cent last year.
The reported on the various headings as follows, in brief:
Sciences
Of the three natural science subjects, performance improved on Biology and Chemistry and declined on Physics. For Biology, there was a marginal improvement – 73 per cent of acceptable grades this year compared with 72 per cent last year. For Physics there was a 10-per cent decline – 66 per cent of entries achieved acceptable grades this year compared with 76 per cent last year.
There was a seven-per cent improvement in performance on Human and Social Biology with 63 per cent of entries achieving acceptable grades compared with 56 per cent last year.
Performance on Agricultural Science (Double Award) improved from 91 per cent last year to 96 per cent this year; while Agricultural Science (Single Award) remained fairly steady. This year 93 per cent of entries achieved acceptable grades compared with 92 per cent last year.
Business
Principles of Accounts was the most outstanding performer in the business subjects cluster, showing the most significantly improved performance. Seventy-five per cent of the 23, 000 entries who took POA achieved acceptable grades compared with 56 per cent last year.
Performance on Economics also improved significantly this year, with 81 per cent of entries achieving acceptable grades compared with 65 per cent last year.
Onthe other hand, performance on Principles of Business, Office Administration and Electronic Document Preparation and Management (EDPM) declined. Performance on EDPM declined marginally, with 86 per cent of entries achieving acceptable grades, compared with 89 per cent last year.
Humanities
Performance on both foreign languages, French and Spanish improved by three percentage points this year when compared with 2012.
There was a marginal one per cent improvement on Caribbean History with 71 per cent of entries achieving acceptable grades compared with 70 per cent in 2012. For Social Studies there was a marginal decline in performance with 66 per cent of entries achieving acceptable grades compared with 70 per cent last year.
Expressive Arts
The subjects in the expressive arts cluster performed very well overall. Ninety-three per cent of entries for Theatre Arts achieved acceptable grades compared with 90 per cent in 2012. Visual Arts saw an eight-per cent improvement in performance with 76 per cent achieving acceptable grades compared with 68 per cent last year.
Performance on Music improved with 70 per cent of entries for Music achieving acceptable grades this year compared with 65 per cent last year.
Physical Education and Sport returned the highest percentage of acceptable grades – 96 per cent, even though performance was down slight when compared with 2012 when 98 per cent of the entries achieved similar grades.
Entries
Both candidate entries and subject entries declined this year when compared with 2012. This year 149,311 candidates registered for CSEC examinations, compared with 156,970 candidates in 2012, or just under a five per cent drop.
Six hundred and sixteen thousand, three hundred and forty-six (616,346) subject entries were submitted this year, compared with 635,498 last year.
Mathematics continues to be the largest subject entry with 102,124 entries this year, this is down from 105,849 entries last year.
English A is the second largest subject with 98,063 entries, down from 101,022 entries last year; it is followed by Social Studies–52,772; Principles of Business– 35,430; and Human and Social Biology–32,280.
Additional Mathematics was the subject with the largest increase of entries; this year, 3,151 subject entries were submitted, up from 1,861 when the subject was first offered last year.
