PRESS RELEASE – AN article entitled “CXC: 11,000 Pupils Got Zero Passes” appearing in the Trinidad Newsday newspaper on August 13th and picked up by St Lucia News Online should be of utmost interest to educators across the region. Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) Registrar Glenroy Cumberbatch divulged the shocking news, at a function for the official release of results in Grenada on Saturday 11th, that some 11,000 pupils across the region who wrote the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) Exam (formerly ‘O’ levels) last May/June got no passes.
Cumberbatch’s lament was that “the region might not be adequately preparing pupils to be employed or self-employed” and he went on to recommend that “one way to remedy this trend was to aim for a ‘wallet of certification’ which also includes the CVQ and CCSLC, known to be vocational qualifications, to certify competence in a particular area.”
This cogent argument immediately caught the eye of the Board of Directors, including the Executive Director of the Centre for Adolescent Renewal and Education (C.A.R.E.) who, in 2012 had been prescient in taking the decision to have students at that institution enter for the CCSLC in preference to the CSEC, and later also adding the CVQ to its offerings.
Clearly, C.A.R.E. feels validated by this breaking news and the Registrar’s consequent proposal to educators and education planners in the region, and will continue to offer both the CVQ and CCSLC in combination with its well-known Adolescent Development Programme (ADP). C.A.R.E. views this as a winning combination which will ensure the sustainability of that intuition’s well-earned reputation for providing the workplaces of Saint Lucia with qualified, disciplined entrance-level employees.