A week after students across the country viewed their preliminary Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) results, the public was informed that there has been a 3.1 percent increase in the local pass rate.
According to the country’s CXC Registrar Myrick Smith, 1,216 students sat the CSEC 2023 June examinations via the 21 public and private secondary schools in the country. The average pass rate this year for Antigua and Barbuda is 75.4 percent, an increase from the 72.3 percent in 2022.
The percentage of students who passed five or more subjects with Maths and English is 22 percent (267 of 1,216 students) which increased from the 2022 statistics where 19.5 percent (250 of 1,285 students) achieved this.
CSEC candidates who passed five or more subjects with either Maths or English A both stand at 23.3 percent (283 students), with the 2022 figures being 21 percent (270 of 1,285 students), and 21.3 percent (274 of 1,285 students), respectively.
The top CSEC student for Antigua and Barbuda has yet to be announced due to the three-to-four-week period where students can query their grades. These queries could possibly lead to a higher grade in some subject areas and, by extension, a higher ranking.
However, based on the preliminary results, the potential top student, ‘Student A’, achieved 23 passes with 20 grade ones and three grade twos, and is a student at the St Joseph’s Academy.
In second place is Student B, also from the St Joseph’s Academy, who achieved 26 passes with 19 grade ones, six grade twos, and a grade three.
Students C and D, of the Baptist Academy, tied for the third position having passed a total of 20 subjects with 17 grade ones, two grade twos, and an ungraded mark. The ungraded mark, Smith said, is set to change to reflect a grade when the results are finalised, which may break the tie between the two candidates.
Excluding the mandatory literacy and numeracy subjects such as Maths and English A, business subjects including Principles of Business (POB), Principles of Accounts (POA), and Office Administration (OA) were popular among students. In total, 2,000 students sat business subjects with 1,793 (89.7 percent) of them obtaining a pass.
Among the subject groupings, business subjects also boast the highest pass rate, followed by the TVET (Visual Arts, Building Technology etc) and Performing Arts grouping with 85.3 percent (875 passes of the total 1,026).
The sciences—inclusive of Biology and Chemistry—take third position with 76.2 percent (924 passes of 1,212), and humanities—inclusive of Social Studies and Geography—with 72.6 (1,028 passes of the total 1,416) in the fourth position. In fifth is Literacy and Numeracy which had a pass rate of 55.9 percent (1,339 passes of the total 2,397).
Subjects such as Biology and Caribbean History saw a pass rate above this year’s average (75.4 percent). Specifically, Biology had a pass rate of 79.7 percent and Caribbean History had a pass rate of 80.5 percent, both of which top the regional averages of 75 and 71.9 percent, respectively.
Smith further mentioned that Antigua and Barbuda exceeded the regional average 23 of the 33 subject areas.
The average pass rate for Maths and French in Antigua and Barbuda, however, are 32.6 and 51.4 percent, respectively, which are below the regional averages of 45.7 percent and 61.6 percent.
The CXC registrar also mentioned that 10 of the 21 secondary schools had a pass rate below 71.4 percent, lower than the overall average pass rate of 75.4 percent. However, for the remaining 11 schools, they attained a pass rate above the average.
In addition, Director of Education, Clare Browne, who was present during the briefing on state media on Wednesday night, took the opportunity to commend the students who sat the CSEC June 2023 examinations.
“We celebrate our students. We commend them highly for their resilience because we can never forget the context in which they would have operated through because these same students were impacted by Covid as well,” Browne stated.
CSEC examinations fall under the purview of the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) which was established in 1972 under agreement by the participating governments in the Caribbean Community (Caricom).
The first of these examinations were done in 1974 in five subject areas, according to CXC’s website.
