Antigua and Barbuda sees sharp decline in number of students writing CAPE

1. To have an honest conversation on this, we must address all issues, real and perceived. I believe one of the issues here is because there is a lot of perception of favoritism in the Management at State College. They have this backward policy in place where they keep inventing artificially-difficult reasons for students NOT to enter programs they want to enter, by putting hurdles in place (like the need for a pass in CXC maths for student with 7-10 other CXC subjects) for all kind of areas where it is not needed to matriculate into University. So State College making access to education more difficult, while Universities to include UWI are more accommodating, practical and uses common sense when allowing their students to matriculate.
   Any student with 7 plus CXC subjects should be allowed to enter State College and purse their subjects (with the provision they still sign up to do their CXC Maths). At the end of the day, they have to pass the subjects they paid to do at State College if they want to advance, and that is what matters, not all them artificial barriers to education.

   The Senior Administrators at State College (ABCAS) should be creative to find COMMON-SENSE ways to work-with and encourage students to enter higher education, instead of using the 1990s barriers to keep them from pursuing the courses they desire to study. Especially since Universities here and online are facilitating students higher education in a common-sense way for the times we are in.

   • you sound like a BITTER “INSIDER”

2. @The Administrators at State College are to blame

   So you’re saying the standard to get into State College, the sixth form college, is too high, so they will accept the lower standard at the UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES FIVE ISLAND CAMPUS?

3. @ No Surprise

   … hence the reason the application of COMMON SENSE was stated. The CSEC show only 19.5% of students pass 5 subjects with both English and Maths. So are you suggesting a student with7, 8, 9 or more CSEC subjects without Maths should not be able to attend State College and study a business or accounting discipline?
   That is where the application of common sense rules comes in. The goal should be to make education more accessible, by simply applying common-sense rules.

4. Good! Wonderful! Brilliant news that students no longer have to waste their time at that dreary place.
   When I was there, you had to do History to do Law, whereas at UWI, you only need good grades to enter the law programme.
   If you did a Social Science like Management of Business, you couldn’t do a course in another field like Literature.
   As @ Administrators at State College are to blame is right! The place has looked tired, rundown and has been an absolute drag to attend but they make it out to be that it’s a big thing by implementing all those damn restrictions.
   People wind up getting CAPE subjects and still working basic, entry level jobs.
   There are people who matriculated into US higher ranking universities WITHOUT CAPE.
   Let’s just shut the place down. It serves NO real purpose than to keep people employed.

5. Maths has always been tricky, but maybe it’s time the schools invest in more support for applied and integrated maths.

6. It’s worrying to see CAPE participation dropping so much. I wonder if students really understand the long-term impact of skipping these exams.

7. As a country and as a region we cry lack of resources and place ourselves among the poor nations.
   We lack imagination and leadership, that’s what we lack.
   Why are the administrators of ASC the ones who determines what the curriculum should look like and how should it be structured.

   Husky Cabinet is a fiefdom school administrators quickly build barriers to protect their positions.
   The ASC curriculum should be designed after input by widely recognized tech experts, employers, teachers/acadamians and those with a vested interest including former students.

   Curriculum should not be left with a bunch of overloads with their personal feeling about education structure.

8. Lots of interesting points raised but clearly more investigation and analysis are needed. E.g. Concerning the decline, did the decline begin when other tertiary institutions e.g. Harrison Centre, UWI etc. opened or expanded? In that case, the numbers simply reflect students choosing alternative paths not that there is anything wrong with CAPE. On the other hand is it true as some allege that Math is now being required for subject areas that did not require it previously e.g. some Social Science and Arts subjects? In that case, the Ministry should look into and discuss with the management that matter of suitable prerequisites for entry. In terms of the relevance of CAPE, whereas some students could go straight to university without CAPE, are all university degrees accessible without CAPE subjects? Students are not always going to university to study a single subject such as Law or History, sometimes they are going into more complicated programmes such as Medicine that has more complicated requirements. If going to UWI there are sometimes alternative intense 1 year preliminary courses that could be taken BUT what are the statistics of the pass rates of those for 16 year old students coming straight out of secondary school? I have heard that many students struggle to pass such courses at UWI. For an honest discussion the pass rates of CAPE vs prelim are needed. Also needed are the pass rates and averaged for the next year for those students who came through CAPE vs prelim. Jamaica still does CAPE even though it has Mona, the oldest UWI campus. Barbados still does CAPE even though it has Cavehill Campus. Trinidad still does CAPE even though it has the St. Augustine campus. The UK and all of Europe and South America still have programmes like CAPE. Only some people in Antigua seems to think that with the new FIC campus CAPE should be abandoned. Most persons saying this actually went through the U.S. system not UWI hence the reason they don’t see the relevance of CAPE. However, even to enter the U.S. system requires a bit further study than fifth form for many programmes so not every student can go straight from high school to a U.S. college or university either. The proper thing to do would be for regional experts from Ministries of education, UWI and other universities and colleges to look at the entire system and make a regional decision about CAPE. Antigua alone cannot just stop offering our students this well established pathway and the so-called decline might not be significant or might be an easy fix if it’s just a math problem to solve.

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