The Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) has confirmed reports from some Gleaner sources, who said that there have been a number of cases in which the examining body made adjustments to the initial grades for students who sat the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE) this year.

Cleveland Sam, assistant registrar, public information and customer services, in a written response to The Gleaner, said that the grade changes resulted from "CXC's pre-emptive quality-control mechanism that is in place to ensure that candidates receive the grade they earn."

The Gleaner has been reliably informed that students from a number of high schools who sat CAPE, particularly economics, had received adjustments in their initial grades. Grades, in some instances, improved from three to two, and in some cases from two to one.

"While candidates may have received the original results online, they have received the corrected preliminary slips and this will certainly be reflected on their certificates and any transcript issued by CXC on their behalf. Corrective and preventive measures are being put in place to ensure that such discrepancies do not occur again," Sam noted.

Under CXC's e-marking system, scripts are scanned and uploaded to a central database where they are stored. Each script has a unique candidate number and this is matched with the candidate's name.

The script is divided into questions and allocated to markers randomly. Markers have no visibility of candidate name and registration number. After the scripts are marked, the data are loaded into the Examinations Processing System and various reports are generated.