CXC to determine fate of students caught cheating in Trinidad

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC – Education Minister Anthony Garcia says the Barbados-based Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) will determine whether or not four students who were caught cheating during Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate (CSEC) Maths exams earlier this year will be disqualified for a period of two years from all exams.

The students, from the Tranquility Government Secondary School who sat the exam in May, were caught cheating after a video was posted to social media showing them and other students us­ing their cellphones to share an an­swer sheet.

According to the Education Minister, the disqualified students were the ones who were easily identified in the video.

It’s reported that af­ter they were caught cheat­ing, the invigilators al­lowed the students to com­plete their ex­ams but warned that they would face se­vere consequences.

The invigilators were later dismissed. 

In­ves­ti­ga­tions car­ried out by both the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and CXC found that some stu­dents had re­fused to leave their cellphones with school of­fi­cials on the day of the ex­am.

Both the Ministry and CXC have strict poli­cies pro­hibit­ing the use of elec­tron­ic devices dur­ing ex­ams.

The re­sults of the 2019 CSEC and the Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am­i­na­tion will be re­leased by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion this week.

“Our stu­dents are do­ing ex­cep­tion­al­ly well as the pass rate is 94 per cent,” said Garcia, who was quoted by the Trinidad Guardian as saying that of­fi­cials were yet to com­plete the analy­sis of the CSEC re­sults but as­sured it would be done by Tuesday.

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