Sir Hilary hopes for strides in Information Technology

Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, chair of the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC), is of the view that every citizen in the region needs to be proficient in Information Technology.

Sir Hilary was speaking at the Final Awards Committee meeting recently to review the performance of candidates in the January 2016 CSEC examination.{{more}} He made the comments after observing that both Mathematics and English A had over 11,000 candidate entries, but only 1,048 candidates entered for Information Technology.

“Information Technology should be as equally important as English and Mathematics for our social and economic development,” the CXC chair and UWI vice-chancellor stated.

Speaking to members of the Final Awards Committee from seven CXC participating territories and CXC staff, Professor Beckles said that one is handicapped by not being proficient in Information Technology in the 21st century. He said he understands the traditional importance that was placed on English and Mathematics, but argued that the same prominence needs to be placed on Information Technology.

“I would have to say that if the region allows a generation of adults to grow with a discomfort in Information Technology, we will be doing them a disservice,” he stated. “We do need to uproot this discomfort!”

The Final Awards Committee (FAC) is part of the CXC quality assurance mechanism, which reviews the performance of each subject in each examination sitting. The committee meets after each examination sitting and comprises representatives from seven participating countries on a rotating basis. The current members are Anguilla, Barbados, Cayman Islands, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago.