Guyana has recorded a decline in the pass rate for the two main subject areas of Mathematics and English Language at this year’s Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) exams, even while there were improvements in other subject areas.
Giving a breakdown of this year’s CSEC performance, Chief Education Officer Saddam Hussain noted that the overall pass rate with Grade one to three passes in five or more subjects is 67.2% which represents a slight reduction from last year.
A total of 11,612 students wrote the exams with improve performances recorded in 12 subject areas, while 12 other subject areas remained constant and there were declines in others.
Only 31% of students who wrote this year’s Mathematics exams gained Grade One to Three passes, representing a 3% decline compared to last year.
69% of students who wrote English Language recorded Grade One to Three passes.
Education Minister Priya Manickchand in reflecting on the decline, said the strike by teachers earlier this year took place at a critical time when students were perparing for the exams.
“Even with that harshness and shock into the system—because of measures the Ministry took to lessen the impact of that strike, we didn’t do as badly someone sitting trying to analyse pre results what we would have done. So, where we drop in Mathematics is still something not happy about, we dropped a couple percentage points, but the Caribbean dropped 7 percentage points, we dropped 3%,” the Education Minister noted.
She said systems are already being put in place to ensure that there is a turn around next year in those subject areas.
Meanwhile, there has been mixed performances in the business subjects.
Principle of Business recorded a pass rate of 74%, Economics saw a declined pass rate of 61%, Principle of Accounts remained at 64% and Office Administration improved from 85% to 88%.
“Performances improved in the sciences except for Chemistry and integrated science. So, we had an increase in biology and HSB and in Physics. Chemistry moved from a pass rate of 60% in 2023 to 59% a drop of 1%. Physics moved from 54% in 2023 to 66% in 2024,” Hussein announced,” the Chief Education Officer noted.
All of the Technical and Vocational subjects saw a pass rate of over 80%, except for Clothing and Textiles, which recorded a 71.5% pass rate.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login