Barbados and other Caribbean countries made a saving of more than $14 million in exam fees last year.Registrar of the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC), Dr Didacus Jules, revealed this on Wednesday night, when CXC and the Barbados National Council of Parent Teacher Associations held a town hall meeting at Harrison College.He said the 169 611 candidates taking 610 491 CXC subjects spent $27.3 million last year.He told the gathering of parents, teachers and students that while CXC exams cost less, they were of a high quality and accepted by several universities.The meeting was called to highlight the work of the regional examinations body and to allow parents, teachers and students to raise concerns and seek clarification on some issues.Jules announced that CXC would shortly be rolling out a new “suite” of programmes. Come September, students in secondary schools in Barbados will be taking two additional examinations offered by CXC – the Caribbean Certificate of Secondary Level Competence (CCSLC) and the Caribbean Vocational Qualification (CVQ).The CVQ is a competency-based qualification which will give all students the opportunity to leave secondary school with a certification in a skill. The CCSLC, expected to be mandatory for all students at the secondary level, is seen as representing the base qualification for all secondary school leavers. It should help Barbados increase the number of school-leavers who have the appropriate knowledge, skills and competencies to successfully enter the job market or to embark on some form of economic enterprise. One of the concerns raised at the meeting was the extensive ground covered by CXC syllabuses.One parent complained that vacations and after-school sports were “vaporising” as students were forced to organise more study periods to be on target. (TY)
