Bishops High School is this year’s best performing school based on matriculation calculated on students receiving grades one, two and three for five and more subjects while Queen’s College is the top school based on its overall performance of the total scores of all students combined.
The analysis of this year’s Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate Examinations (CSEC) was released on Thursday by Education Minister Sheik Baksh.
Baksh said he is satisfied with this year’s performance of students despite the drop in performance of students of who wrote mathematics.
Education Minister, Shaik Baksh and other officials at the news conference to release the CXC results
This year saw 70,000 subject entries, an increase from 62,945 entries for 2010. Baksh said this increase is a direct result of more children completing their secondary school education. Of the number writing CSEC this year, 26,870 were males and 44,000 were females. The education minister noted that he has seen a preponderance of more females writing CSEC and the ministry is working with male students to encourage them to write CSEC. In this year’s results, 64.4 per cent of candidates obtained passes in at least grades one, two and three while 84.6 per cent obtained passes in grades one, two, three and four. Some subject areas saw drastic improvement in this year’s sitting and the minister credited the ministry’s interventions for the results. English saw a 60.8 per cent over all pass rate compared to a 59.2 per cent in 2010.
Mathematics, which secured a 34.5 per cent pass rate in 2010, dropped even further this year recording a 30.4 per cent pass rate.
While attempting to justify the performance in mathematics, Baksh said the poor performance is because of a shortage of trained, graduate mathematics teachers in the system.
He said he has all intentions of pushing ahead to bring skilled teachers from overseas.
He added that mathematics across the Caribbean at CSEC level seemed to be a challenge since it can be seen that Barbados secured a 38 per cent pass rate, Trinidad and Tobago, a 31 per cent and Jamaica, a 31 per cent. In the long term, he said the ministry is focusing on the Cyril Potter College of Education to strengthen the curriculum and increase the competency of students. The non-graduate math programme offered by the National Centre of Education, Research and Development is still open, he said.
Other important subject areas in which students performed exceptionally well are agriculture science which recorded a 90 per cent pass rate; chemistry, 67 per cent; English B, 60 per cent; integrated science, 76 per cent; French, 98 per cent; information technology, 73 per cent; home economics/management, 90 per cent; physics, 70 per cent; theatre arts and physical education/ sports scoring 100 per cent passes respectively.
Public schools, which were ranked on a matriculation table looked at the amount of students recording five or more subjects in grades one, two and three in one sitting, saw Bishops High School emerging on top with a 96.20 passes, closely followed by Queens College with a 90.43 per cent passes. President’s College secured third place with 81.43 pass followed by St Roses with 78.49 per cent, Annandale Secondary with 72.73 per cent and St Joseph’s High School with 71.88 per cent.
For private schools on the same method of matriculation, Saraswati Vidya Niketan topped with a 90 per cent pass rate, followed by Marian Academy with 62.12 per cent, and ISA Islamic school with 59.2 per cent. The average matriculation scores of the public schools were 81.82 per cent and for private schools, 54.8 per cent.
For the second method of matriculation which is calculated on the standard in overall passes, Queens College emerged as the top school with a 98 per cent pass rate, followed by Bishops High School with 97.60 per cent; Presidents College, 96.90 per cent; Saraswati Vidya Niketan- 94.90; Mae’s Secondary, 94.80 per cent; and Mackenzie High school with 94.1 per cent.
The overall pass rate for public schools is 67.3 per cent while the pass rate for private schools is 54.5 per cent. The mean of both scores is 64.4 per cent, a slight decline from 2010. Public schools have seen improvement of performance, Baksh said.
Region Four came out on top for the regional ranking of public schools with 74.1 per cent total passes in grades one, two and three.
The Georgetown Education District came in second with 71.5 per cent passes in grades one, two and tree and Region Six with 70.3 per cent passes in grades one, three and three.
Baksh noted that Region Six’s performance has improved compared to 2010.
Region Two secured a 62.8 per cent passes in subjects securing grades one, two and three. Forty two persons secured a minimum of eleven grade ones. This amount comes out of a total of 188 candidates who secured passes of grades one, two and three in eight or more subjects.
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