President of the Barbados Secondary Teachers’ Union (BSTU) Mary Redman is accusing the Barbados-headquartered Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) of committing a grave blunder by failing to grade school-based assessment (SBA) projects submitted by some Combermere School students.
A local media report had presented the students as being in tears because SBAs from the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination business management class and a Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate geography class had not been graded.
One student appeared to blame the school, stating that while there was a problem regarding the teachers and the running of the school, he did not think it would have affected the students’ results.
The CXC’s Assistant Registrar for Public Information and Customer Service Cleveland Sam said he was unaware of the matter.
However, Redman came to Combermere’s defence, saying there was no doubt that the projects were corrected and the information sent to the regional examination body.
“I did my investigations, the SBAs were in fact corrected, the marks were uploaded, the samples were sent to CXC, so therefore the fault cannot be at the level of the school,” the BSTU boss said.
Redman said the CXC had a history or failing to grade results, stressing this has “happened so often”.
“Over the years there have been many instances where CXC has sent back people’s results incorrectly ungraded. A couple years ago all of the art students in the country got ungraded,” Redman said.
“I expected that the students would have been disappointed because they would have known that their work was corrected and sent to CXC.”
It was because of this history, the trade unionist said, that she had advised her members to keep copies of the strips whenever they send the grades to the CXC.
Speaking about her experiences as a teacher, Redman said: “From time to time mistakes are made by the CXC. I have proof of that at the school where I have worked for a number of years where we know over time, there have been instances where students’ SBAs, even though they were submitted, [and] the marks sent off to CXC, the students got ungraded. We had to resend those marks and deal with the situation. CXC is an examining body and is supposed to deal with their mistakes.”
Combermere was one of three secondary schools where teachers had staged industrial action in May – the others being St George Secondary School and the Graydon Sealy Secondary School – over the dismissal of three teachers.
The school has also had a long-running environmental problem, which has forced several school closures.
