The announcement of scholarships and exhibitions has been delayed and a virtual presentation of the results is scheduled to occur in a ‘timely manner’ within the coming weeks.
This declaration was made by the Minister of Education, Technological and Vocational Training (METVT), Kay McConney, in a press briefing yesterday in the Media Resource Department at the Ministry’s Elsie Payne headquarters, Constitution Road, St. Michael.
Minister McConney revealed that so far there are 15 scholarship winners and 20 exhibition winners but admitted that those numbers were expected to change.
“I want to share with you that this year we had 15 scholarships and 20 exhibitions, and it is possible that that number may increase because there are some students who, as is their right and as they’re entitled to do, have asked CXC for a review of their results, and based on the outcomes of those reviews, we may very well find ourselves with more scholarships and exhibitions, and that is a normal thing; that’s part of the normal process.”
Concerning the results of CSEC and CAPE examinations, the Education Minister explained that the METVT would engage in greater discussion in the near future, but could not do so at the briefing because of a situation in Barbados where there were approximately 119 students with ungraded papers. She disclosed, that an error regarding a coding difference in the registration for certain students, caused “a bit of a challenge”.
She continued: “The results will be given to you in a more fulsome way in another forum. We know that this is just a short time that we have here, but the reason was that we didn’t want to have to come back to you twice, because there was such a significant number of ungraded papers, and we needed to address that. There were also some other minor challenges that all have now been resolved.”
After offering reassurance that the issue is resolved, Ms. McConney stated that her ministry would continue to have conversations with partners and stakeholders in Education, both in the schools and as well as with CXC, “to mitigate the occurrence happening again”.