Registrar and Chief Executive Officer of the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC), Dr. Wayne Wesley has announced changes in the administration of the exams, noting that effective January 2026, “all examinations administered in the January sessions will be offered electronically, either as e-assessment or hybrid e-assessment.”
He made the disclosure while delivering remarks during a virtual press conference at the official start of the 2025 examinations (with the customary oral examinations in Spanish, French and Portuguese) on Tuesday.
According to him, in the event that students are unable to write the exams electronically he/she will be accommodated during the May-June examinations where both the paper-based and e-assessment will be made available.
“CXC is repositioning; the strategic repositioning of CXC marks the beginning of our transformation effort,” Dr.Wesley stated. “This is the beginning of the end of the Caribbean Examinations Council as we know it, as we transform for greater regional impact.”
He pointed out that since December 2023, CXC has been engaged in a comprehensive, strategic repositioning exercise with an intended overhaul of the old CXC.
“This comprehensive strategic repositioning is about transforming for greater relevance and sustainability,” he explained. “It encompasses three main components as follows; the modernization of our governance system which involves a review of CXC’s article of agreement to include expanded stakeholder representation, enhanced accountability structures, relevant expertise, and prudent oversight…”
Dr. Wesley continued, “Secondly, organizational redesign. This speaks to redesigning with a resilient construct to make CXC fit for a purpose in carrying its duty of care to the regional education system.”
He said what this means is a CXC transforming for greater relevance, and sustainability to achieve organization agility, “where we are seeking to respond quickly and effectively to unpredictable events and finally institutional capability, developing robust governance framework and enhancing human capacity to be able to [deal] with the many challenges that we must face together.”
He noted that the third element of the repositioning strategy is that of reimagining assessment and certification.
“This calls for the recalibration and refocus of the council’s system of assessment and certification, embracing flexible and progressive learning and competency-based education in alignment with economic and social transformation,” Dr. Wesley explained.
“First of all, we will be emphasising the acquisition of skills and competencies, social, behavioural, and cultural, as well as using prior learning assessment in recognising the competencies students and candidates have achieved.”
He said, secondly, CXC will be redesigning its qualifications to achieve optimal balance between content coverage and the acquisition of skills through various approaches, including signalling of current and future employment and skills demands, as well as the modularisation of syllabuses.
“A new qualification has been developed and within this construct, the learner is at the focus…” Dr. Wesley revealed. “We will be dealing with the learning style of the individual, the learning rate and the learning depth; how students learn, the pace at which they learn, and the amount of content that they can absorb at any one time.
“In that regard, we have recognised that there are multiple options; you have advanced gifted students who can take the accelerated track and those who can do so through a compressed programme,” he added.
Moreover, he pointed out that CXC also recognises that there are the typical students who will take the general track, completing a programme in a specified timeframe, as in most of the syllabuses, in two years, “and then you have the individual who will need a flexible track and extended programme time to treat with and absorb the content needed.”
