Education Minister reports on CAPE results at CFBC and Nevis’ Sixth Form

File photo of CFBC students in 2003 (photo by Erasmus Williams)

BASSETERRE, ST. KITTS, SEPTEMBER 1ST 2010 (CUOPM) – An increasing number of secondary school leavers in St. Kitts and Nevis are pursuing post secondary education at the Clarence Fitzroy Bryant College (CFBC) in St. Kitts and the Sixth Form of the Charlestown Secondary School in Nevis.

According to Federal Minister of Education, Sen. the Hon. Nigel Carty, 456 students registered at the Clarence Fitzroy Bryant College (CFBC) for the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE) compared to 313 in 2008 and 372 in 2009 and 143 students registered for CAPE at the Sixth Form of the Charlestown Secondary School compared to 138 in 2009 and 107 in 2008.

“This is a good development as it shows that an increasing number of our secondary school leavers are taking the opportunity to pursue post-secondary education at our national college, with the obvious aspiration of some day moving on to university,” said Minister Carty in a national broadcast.

CAPE is taken by students in the Division of Arts, Sciences and General Studies at the Clarence Fitzroy Bryant College, and at the Sixth Form of the Charlestown Secondary School.

Students take CAPE at Unit 1 and Unit 2 in selected subject areas. Most Unit 1 courses are taken by Year One students while Unit 2 courses are taken at Year Two.

In his address, Minister Carty, who was given the education portfolio in February this year, said in the 2010 exams, there were 1,417 registered subject entries.

“Of the 1417 registered subject entries, 1234 returned results with 991 passes,” said Minister Carty.

This he said is an overall pass rate so far of 80.30 percent, however, an official query has been made to CXC with respect to the results for Literature in English 1 for which no results have been received.

File photo of Sixth Form students at Nevis’ Charlestown Secondary School (photo by Erasmus Williams)

Minister Carty said the 80.30 percent pass rate, although reasonably satisfactory, is down from 2009 when an 82.38 percent pass rate was obtained. “We await the result of the query in order to compute the final pass rate,” he said.

The Minister of Education, reported fairly high pass rates of over 80 percent returned for Accounting 1, Art & Design 1&2, Biology 2, Caribbean Studies, Chemistry 1&2, Communication Studies, Computer Science 1 & 2, Environmental Science 1&2, French 1&2, Geography 2, Information Technology 2, Law 2, Literatures in English 2, Management of Business 2, Pure Mathematics 2, Physics 2, Sociology 1 and Spanish 1.

“Twelve of these subjects had 100 percent passes,” said Minister Carty, who commended all the lecturers for their hard work.

“Special mention must be made of subjects such as Economics, Management of Business and Sociology in which there is always a high enrollment sometimes over 100 students, which are able to return pass rates of over 75 percent. Success in Law Unit 1 was borderline with a pass rate of 52.8 percent. Pure Mathematics 1, Information Technology 1 and Applied Mathematics, by their less than satisfactory pass rates, are being highlighted here as areas of weakness that must be worked on for improvement,” said Minister Carty.

In relation to the Sixth Form students at the Charlestown Secondary School, total of 143 candidates were registered for 573 subject entries.

“The number of candidates showed the increasing trend as mentioned earlier for the CFBC with 107 in 2008, and 138 in 2009. The average pass rate stands at 82.8 % compared with 86.1 % in 2009.

“The majority of the subjects returned pass rates of over 80 percent, with ten subject areas attaining 100 percent passes. However, Pure Mathematics 1, Communication Studies 1, Physics 2, Geography 1 and Management of Business 1 achieved pass rates below or at 50 percent,” said Minister Carty.

He used the opportunity to congratulate the students and lecturers at the Clarence Fitzroy Bryant College (CFBC) and the Sixth Form of the Charlestown Secondary School for their success and good work.