CAPE results show dip in performance

Vincentian students who sat this year’s advanced level examinations from the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) did not perform as well as their colleagues did last year.{{more}}

The Ministry of Education said on Wednesday that preliminary results of the May/June 2010 Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations showed an overall pass rate of 84 per cent, 5 per cent less than last year.

The statistics, however, showed that the number of Grade I’s students received increased slightly: from 4 per cent to 5.3 per cent.

Grade IV, which CXC says represents “a satisfactory standard” of performance, was the most common grade.

Grades I to V are passing grades, with Grade I being the highest.

Arts and Humanities students were among the top performers, returning 100 per cent passes in French Unit 2, Spanish Unit 2, Literatures in English Unit 2, and Caribbean Studies.

There was an above 75 per cent pass rate in all other disciplines, except Pure Mathematics Unit 1, Economics Unit 1, Management of Business Unit 1, History Unit 2, Biology Unit 1, and Information Technology Unit 1, which had the lowest pass rate of 43 per cent.

The 722 candidates, all of whom were students of the Community College, sat 1556 examinations in 24 different subjects.

This represents a 56 per cent increase from the 966 subject examinations taken in 2009.

The performance in Spanish Unit 1 improved drastically, up from 69 percent to 94 per cent.

“This year’s results show that high pass rates have been maintained or increased in the majority of subjects taken,” Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education, Nicole Bonadie-Baker, said in a release.

Other advanced proficiency subjects were taken at Cambridge International Examination but the Ministry of Education had not released the results of those examinations at press time on Wednesday. (KXC)