This year’s sitting of the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE) and Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) saw a four-year high in the number of absentee candidates, according to the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC).

Providing an overview of the exams on Thursday last at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre, Director of Operations of CXC’s Examination Services Division Dr Nicole Manning said the data recorded for the absenteeism for this year was the highest in a four-year period.

She explained that they recorded absentees this year at 11.23% for CSEC, as opposed to 5.35% last year, while for CAPE the number was 8.83% this year as compared with 3.99% last year.

“It was the highest we would have had in four years…and I want us to remember that this group would have registered, not necessarily deferred, but would have decided not to attend the examination,” she pointed out.

While she did not gave an explanation for the absenteeism, it is believed that the difficulties of the COVID-19 pandemic was a contributor.

“For CAPE, we did see a reduction both in candidate entries and subject entries and this would have been our lowest cohort for the last four years. We saw where we had a reduction for candidate entries as much as 27,750; that would have been the number of candidate entries we would have had, and for subject entries 110, 020. We saw a reduction likewise and that reduction resulted in 103,445 candidates sitting examinations this year, while 502,859 subject entries for CSEC,” Manning said during the presentation of the results.

Manning further stated that a number of students chose to have their sittings deferred to January and June/July 2022 sittings.