Caribbean Examination Council Reports Increase In CAPE Performance For The First Time In Six Years

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados CMC – The Barbados-based Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC), Monday, said that overall performance at the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE) has reached the 90 percent mark for the first time in six years.

It said this year, 90.15 percent of the Unit entries achieved Grades I – V, which are the acceptable grades at CAPE, noting that in the last five years the percentage of entries achieving acceptable Grades remained steady at 89 percent.

But CXC said the growth of CAPE slowed this year for both candidate entries and unit entries. It said the number of candidates entered for CAPE stood at 28,228, an increase of 185 candidates compared with 2012.

The number of unit entries submitted increased, but marginally; this year 109,659 unit entries were submitted compared with 108,379 last year, an increase of 1280 entries.

“Of the 28,228 candidates taking CAPE, 62 percent are female and 38 percent male. The majority, 43 percent are 18-years old, 33 percent are 19-years and older and 21 percent are 17-years old.”

CXC said that this year, 13.77 percent of Unit entries achieved Grade I; 19.03 percent achieved Grade II; 22.20 percent achieved Grade III; 19.49 percent achieved Grade IV and 15.67 percent achieved Grade V.

The Barbados-based regional examination council said performance improved on 19 Units, remained steady on 10 and declined on 17 Units.

“Art and Design Units and 1 and 2 returned the best results overall with 100 percent of entries achieving Grades I – V.  The highest percentage of Grade Is – 58 percent was also achieved in Art and Design Unit 2.”

CXC said there were mixed performances in Mathematics and the Natural Sciences, while most of the Units in the Humanities cluster performed better than they did last year, with only a few exceptions.

Of the six business units, Management of Business Unit 2 returned the best performance, 96 percent, even though it was one percentage point below last year’s performance.

CXC said Economics Unit 2 showed the most improved performance when compared with last year; 87 percent of entries achieved acceptable grades compared with 79 percent last year. Economics Unit 1 remained the same as last year with 82 percent of acceptable grades.

The Units in the Technical and Vocation cluster performed better than they did last year with one exception.

CXC said both Units of Art and Design achieved 100 acceptable grades and that there was a 10 percent improvement in performance for Electrical and Electronic Technology Unit 1.

The two single-Unit core courses, Caribbean Studies and Communication Studies continue to perform very well. Ninety-seven percent of entries for Communication Studies achieved Grades I – V this year, CXC said noting that “this is an improvement on the 95 percent which gained similar grades last year.

For Caribbean Studies, 93 percent of entries achieved acceptable grades, a decline when compared with 2012 when 97 percent of entries achieved similar grades, it added.