According to the Ministry of Education, the overall pass rate for Mathematics has risen from 33.10% in 2019 to 53.41% in 2020. Students also excelled in English A with an increase from 76.08% in 2019 to 86.73% in 2020.
The regional average is 52% for Mathematics and 82 % for English A.
The 20.31% turnaround in the mathematics results will please education officials, principals, and teachers following the continuing poor performance of students across the region.
Last week, the Barbados-based Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) released regional results showing that fifty-two per cent of students who sat the recent CSEC Mathematics examination had passed.
This is in fact “a slight improvement” over the 49 per cent passes in 2018 and “a marked improvement” over 2019 when some 46 per cent of students attained acceptable grades, said the Director of Operations, Examination Services Division at CXC, Nicole Manning.
Speaking to Barbados-based Loop News on the margins of the ceremony for the official release of the July 2020 Examinations Results, CXC Registrar and CEO Dr Wayne Wesley expressed concern with the general trend in the Mathematics results.
“With having just over 50 per cent or 52 per cent… certainly CXC would be concerned about students and their preparation for these examinations,” Wesley said.
He added: “. . .50 per cent would not give us the kind of satisfaction that we would want to have as it relates to the development of the human capital within the region and as such we would definitely have to do some work to increase that number.”