 It was nearly three months ago when Saint Lucia officially made the proclamation of CPEA for our grade six students at its official launching ceremony. Now, we face another historical event along this journey. Over 2,000 students went through a series of assessments which culminated with two days of exams rather than the traditional one day. And we get the opportunity today to reward all of those students' efforts, including their families. This is Saint Lucia's official release of the 2022 CPEA results live from Saint Mary's College. Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Tourism, Investment, Creative Industries, Culture and Information, the Honourable Dr Ernest Heale, Minister of Education, Innovation, Science, Technology and Vocational Training, the Honourable Sean Edward, Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Education, Innovation, Science, Technology and Vocational Training, Dr Pauline Antoine Prospect, Chief Education Officer, Dr Fiona Philip Meyer, Permanent Secretary, Sorry, the Ministry of Education, Innovation, Science, Technology and Vocational Training, my apologies, Miss Michelle Charles, Deputy Chief Education Officer for Instruction, Mr Dawson Raghunanan. We have also with us Deacon Pastor Fabrié, which shall do the invocation, Education Officers for the various districts, Education Officer for Special Education, Mr Dale Sengiz, the Registrar of Examinations, Miss Camilita Matthew, Officers attached to the Curriculum and Materials Development Unit, Camdou, Chief Planning Officer, Dr Louis, Principals, Vice Principals, Other Administrators, Teachers, Staff of the Education and Evaluation Unit, We bid you a pleasant good morning. I invite you now to please stand as we shall call upon Deacon Peter Fabrié to lead us with a word of prayers. Also remain standing so we shall sing our national anthem. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, peace be with you. If Yahweh does not build a house, in vain do its builders toil. If Yahweh does not guard the city, in vain does its guard keep watch. In vain you get up earlier and put off doing, going to bed, sweating to make a living, since it is Yahweh who provides for his beloved as they sleep. Let us pray, Almighty God and Father, we honor you, praise and glorify your name. We thank you for the gift of life and the freedom you gave us to make our own choices. Send your Holy Spirit down upon us all and bless us, especially the students of Common Entrance Exam. That they may continue to persevere in life's constant struggles. Let the Holy Spirit go with them, before and behind them. That they may remain steadfast in the love of Christ. This we ask in the name of your Son Jesus Christ. Amen. There so ever you may, all these hell and the days, when strife and discord dimmed the children's toil, as I've lost the pride, the dignity. May all people live united, strong in soul and strong in heart. Justice, truth and charity. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. You can now have your seats. I wish to further acknowledge the Deputy Prime Minister who is in the capacity today as Acting Prime Minister for St. Lucia. My apologies sir. Okay, so this is the day. We know like any other day the Lord has made, but this day we shall definitely rejoice. Amen. Alright, so I know you have eagerly anticipated the days ending, the days proceeding even before it has started because of what awaits you. However, I would like to now call on our Honorable Minister of Education with the responsibility for science, technology and vocational trading to the podium as he shall deliver a few brief remarks. Please put your hands together as we welcome our Honorable Minister. Thank you very much, Madam Moderator. I will use a truncated protocol list. Firstly, I want to acknowledge the presence of the Acting Prime Minister and Minister responsible for tourism, investment, culture, creative industries and information and parliamentary representative for the constituency of Cass Street South, Dr. the Honorable Ernest Hiller, Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Education, Dr. Pauline Antoine Prosper, Permanent Secretary, Miss Michelle Charles, Chief Education Officer, Dr. Fiona Meyer-Philip, Registrar of Exams, Miss Matthew, principals, teachers, students, invited guests, media practitioners, ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Good morning. It is a good morning and from the information that I have, the morning will be, the atmosphere in here will be enhanced and when you are greeted good morning between now and midday, I think your responses will be a little more enthusiastic. We are gathered here for the long-awaited release of our first CPEA or Caribbean Primary Exit Assessment results. While we may be later than the rest of the region, this delay was necessary to allow for the required vetting to be undertaken and the identified anomalies rectified. The introduction of the CPEA ushered in a new testing paradigm which moved away from the traditional one-shot test to a process-oriented approach. This structure has encapsulated learning, progress of students from a position of being novice to the point of mastery of mathematical, language, civic and scientific literacies. This is a deliberate move away from simple testing subjects to specifically assessing significant literacies which are necessary for matriculation into secondary education. Today is a great day for the education system as we have been able to continuously monitor the competencies of our students. Through continuous formative assessment, schools have been able to reduce learning gaps and ensure the mastery of relevant literacies and skills. The inclusion of standards within the curriculum provides a measure of the extent to which students are achieving the goals of the set curriculum. The introduction of both an internal and external component to this assessment necessitates collaboration among teachers, parents, students and also the Caribbean Examinations Council. Moreover, there continues to be an emphasis on our special education students. This assessment has the potential to measure their skills and aptitude to promote a culture of inclusion. This CPEA is authentic and mirrors our own real-life experiences. The expectation is that students will transition from primary to secondary schools, being more motivated and confident as they strive to become self-regulated learners. Many were skeptical about St. Lucia moving in this direction. Principals, teachers and students voiced their concerns which the Ministry of Education respected and will always continue to respect knowing that the concerns expressed by our stakeholders were done with one intention in mind and that is to make the learning environment and experience the best it can possibly be for our students. Today's results prove that our students' performances align with that of students across the region and in no way deviated significantly from the expected outcomes locally. Of course, there are processes that need to be strengthened and communication among stakeholders must be enhanced moving forward. However, I am of the view, the firm view that embracing the CPEA was the best assessment approach for our grade six students. Today I feel a sense of vindication with the team at the Ministry of Education in this regard. The CPEA presents an opportunity too for our teachers to become more creative and innovative in their instruction. When this happens, our students stand to even better. Our students' stories stand a better chance of attaining success. At the Ministry of Education, the intent is to promote greater action research focusing on each learner ensuring that their unique needs and abilities are nurtured to maximize both their academic and social learning. I am extremely proud of our students and their performances in this, our first CPEA sitting. Congratulations to all. Congratulations to the teachers who brought out the best in our students and you will understand more than most in this country how difficult an academic year it was leading up to the CPEA. I never doubted the ability and the perseverance and the commitment of our teachers and that is why at the highest levels of educational policymaking we were insisting that we would go ahead and today as I said we feel a sense of vindication having critically examined the results presented to you shortly. Our scores ranged from 97.2 to 22.5 with the top ten students hailing from a total of seven different schools. I am particularly encouraged by the performances of our boys. The top five students in this year's exam were all boys. As a country, we registered a mean or should I say the national mean is 70.56%. And I said to the registrar when the results would be presented to me that I will highlight the students who came to perform the best in the various districts. For those of you who follow me on social media and elsewhere you'll have noticed that I've made the point repeatedly. CPEA and other forms of assessment in the primary school system they're not meant to be competition. And so today we will not be pitting one school against each other but what we will do is that we will give due recognition to the students who performed outstandingly. The exam more than anything else is supposed to tell us where we are at with our students. It is supposed to give us a better insight in terms of how we fashion our instruction the different modalities that we embrace and that is what is critical for us at the Ministry of Education. So just to give you an insight into what the performances were like in the eighth education districts starting with district eight sorry the student registering the highest score in district eight is Zephrina Joseph of the Souffre Primary School. She recorded a score of 93.6. District seven, Emilia Emmanuel from Labry Girls Primary 91.4. And I should add that both Zephrina and Emilia have been assigned to the St. Joseph's Convent. District six, Jonathan Yang of Osier Combined School. He registered a score of 96.8 and he will be attending the Viewport Comprehensive Secondary School. In district five two students registered 93.6. They both hail from the Olio Combined School. Lorian Elizabeth Fran Thomas 93.6 She has been assigned to the St. Joseph's Convent and Jaheim Thieris of the Olio Combined School 93.6 St. Mary's College. District four, Cajun Rogers Cicero Combined 93.6 assigned to the St. Joseph's Convent. District three, we have two students Cameron Augustine of the St. Aloysius R.C. School 94.2 assigned to St. Mary's College and naturally the other student by virtue of him being at the St. Aloysius R.C. Boy School with 94.2 has also been assigned to the St. Mary's College and his name is Eugen Lu. District two, Matthew Hassani George Camille Henry Memorial 96. St. Mary's College and the child who registered the most impressive performance from District one is Zaby Fontinelle of the Impolec Music who incidentally registered the most impressive performance nationally with a score of 97.2 assigned to the St. Mary's College to give you an insight to give you an insight of the top the 12 most impressive scores registered in the exam who will start in position 12 my apologies he is yes, Eugen Lu is from the Tapio Private School claim your students sorry, rightfully so and as I indicated he registered a score of 94.2 and he has been assigned to the St. Mary's College my apologies okay, as I said just to give you an insight into the top performance nationally Jason Jeremy the Impolec Music 94.6 signed to St. Joseph's Convent Kashmi Maxwell Perot combined 94.6 before Comprehensive Secondary Kyreda Lionel Kamen Reni Memorial 94.6 St. Joseph's Convent Hazan Reynolds Eucharist Louis SDA 94.8 Leon S. Comprehensive Secondary Colleen Anthony Marfrey the Impolec Music 95.00 St. Mary's College Malia Antoine the Impolec Music 95.2 St. Joseph's Convent Leila Samuel Bonter Preparatory 95.4 St. Joseph's Convent Ethan Bernard OJ combined 95.6 before Comprehensive Jason Taylor OJ combined 95.6 before Comprehensive Secondary School Matthew George Kamen Henry Memorial 96.00 St. Mary's College Jonathan Yang OJ combined 96.8 before Comprehensive and the student who registered the most impressive performance in the inaugural CPE exam is Zavi Fontinello of the Impolec Music with a score of 97.2 and he has been assigned to the St. Mary's College As Minister I'm particularly pleased with the results this year Having said that we have a lot to work on starting in September when the new academic year begins A lot of concerns were expressed and voiced by teachers and other stakeholders Let me give you the assurance that the ministry is doing everything necessary to ensure that we incorporate your feedback as we plan for next year I want to commend all the teachers who have worked with the students the teachers who went beyond the call of duty particularly in a COVID-induced environment and sometimes we sell ourselves short as educators and I just want to thank principals, district education officers, the technical staff and the Ministry of Education for the support that they have given to me and the policy makers as we continue to fashion our way ahead for education in this country I want to say to the parents who are joining online please do not exit unnecessary pressure on the children they are only transitioning from primary education to secondary it is too early to write a child off it is too early to take the children to task because of the schools that they have been assigned to we have quality teachers in all of our secondary schools and as I was saying to how I said to a group of graduating students yesterday it does not really matter which secondary school you go to once you apply yourself and you come in with the requisite determination and commitment you can achieve everything that is there to be achieved in the secondary school system of our country once again congratulations to our teachers our principals education officers students and teachers and I hope that after the ceremony has been brought to an end we can all celebrate the accomplishments and the successes of our children particularly given the fact that what they did was in an environment that was extremely difficult and challenging for all of us thank you very much and enjoy the rest of the day that was really intense and now you've been able to relax and uplift those emotions so I feel really this morning and I know that you do too at hearing upon hearing the results and we have not even heard it all yet this morning Mr. Minister but from what we've been told and even including that our boys are within the five top spots they deserve a round of applause all our students do in my introduction I have said it that would rip the rewards and definitely the Caribbean primary exit assessment has done so first at this time I would like to invite you all in this joy and exuberance to witness our mascot so CPA has a mascot and I'd like to reintroduce our CPA mascot to you please put your hands together for our CPA mascot okay thank you very much thank you thank you so much our CPA mascot and of course it's joy shared joy this morning I tell you alright now we have had someone captaining the ship for a very long time and that is the CPA vessel so allow me now to welcome to the podium our registrar of examinations Ms. Camilita Matthew as she shall provide some analysis of the CPA examinations put your hands together for our registrar please permit me to adopt a protocol that has already been established good morning everyone okay I would like to endorse everything that the minister has indicated this morning concerning our CPA and right now I'm going to dissect the information and present to you the performance on a national level on how students did at this CPA examination education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world and this is a quote from Nelson Mandela so this is what we have to use to inspire our students to move on and to change what is happening in our society the number of candidates who wrote the CPA examination the scores we had 2032 candidates we had some students who fell ill on the day of the examination for the exam and these candidates were given a supplemental examination and we have placed these students at our secondary school so assignments have been made for them 66 primary schools participated in this examination 62 public schools and we also had four private but candidates who wrote the exam coming from private institutions or what we would call homeschooling the internal component consisted of and these were the areas that students had to do at the schools and to present two teachers for grading so that they can get their scores and this would go towards the composite score we had the project pupil test teacher made test book report writing portfolio and the practice in candle skills so all of these were components of the internal component that students were supposed to engage in during the year at the primary school the allocation of marks for the external component 300 points were awarded to towards the external component the internal component 200 points were awarded towards the components that we just saw a while ago and the total number of points was 500 were these marks for our internal components allocated so CXC decided that they would look at the literacies, the four literacies language, mathematics, science and social studies and these are the areas that our internal components were based on they looked at the book report and they assigned all of the scores to the book report to the language literacy the writing portfolio 10 marks again to language the candle skills remember students had to demonstrate skills in language mathematics, science and social studies as a result 10 marks were allocated to each of these literacies teacher test 25 marks for each of the literacies pupil test 5 marks for each the project 5 marks for each so we see in language it carried more weight with 65 points mathematics with 45 science with 45 and also social studies with 45 points for the external components they were all multiple choice items 50 multiple choice items and students did that over to the examination period all four literacies they were even 75 points for each literacy the allocation of marks when we add all of them together the internal and the external components language carried 140 points mathematics 120, science 120 social studies 120 so this is where we end up with the 500 points for our internal plus the external component the range of composite scores range from 22.6% to 97.2% our mean performance by gender we look at this through the four literacies and we can see that in language the females are dominating with a percentage of 78.61% in all four of the literacies the females are dominating again but English language language has the highest percentage mathematics has the lowest but we can see that in our past results for the common entrance examination the CPA has presented us with a better result or in mathematics for both the boys and the girls for the male it's 63.57 and the female 66.56 overall gender performance mean performance for males 68.44% and females 72.48% so we still have a little bit of work to do with the males to bring them up to the performance level of the girls and beyond but we can see that there is improvement so far let us look at the performance from 2019 to 2022 remember in 2022 we didn't have that general paper that we normally have for our common entrance examination and as a result of that we do not have a general paper bar for 2022 so for English language we see the higher performance there in 2022 also for mathematics the higher performance again in 2022 general paper we did not have a general paper and for social studies and the general science we can see a very high percentage here for these two areas let us look at them closer to the 2022 performance per subject English language with 76.09% mathematics 5.96% science 70.16% and social studies 70.87% so we can see that clearly that English language is the subject with the highest percentage performance by components the internal and the external components we can see here that the external component performance is lower in all subject areas or the literacies than the internal component the internal component the performance was very high and the external component the performance was a little lower drastically lower let us look at our main performance throughout the years 2019 to 2022 we can see max improvement in 2022 we had a mean of 61.77 in 2021 and a leap to 70.56 in 2022 so from 2021 to 2022 we had a leap in performance and we must attribute that to our internal component where students will be given the opportunity to present work and to be guided on how, where to improve where they would return improve and by that they would obtain a better grade and this is the result of our performance for the 2022 examination the number of students obtaining 40% English language mathematics in 2021 we could see that English language at 275 but when we look at 2022 we can see only four students obtaining less than 40 in English language and that is very commendable so that means that we have been working with our students aiming at improvement in their language mathematics as well okay we had a slight technical difficulty there we'll get back on track, thank you Mr. Funo for again one more, good, thanks for mathematics we had 286 students obtaining less than 40 but for this year's examination we only have 45 candidates and that is very commendable so things are happening in our primary schools, good things positive things with our students in science only 8 students and in social studies only 17 students so I think we deserve to give our teachers a big round of applause for the hard work and dedication to bring our students to that level next slide please okay let us do what our district means our district performances says a lot very jubilant by saying this I can see the excitement and principles I think that shows your hard work education officers that shows your hard work in your districts with your teachers and principals okay we have here a visual of our top performers which the minister has already identified but we have a visual very good principals education officers as well okay we are moving on to our well I must say that in the first place Zavi Nail Fontenelle with a score of 97.2 from Dan Pullett Louisie Private School I will not go down the entire list because it has already been presented by the minister so we now move on to our important information the Ministry of Education is not able to facilitate requests for reviews of the CPA as we know the external component it was only multiple choice and the internal component it was the various projects and so on that the students did in the classroom principals you can share with your parents the work of your students on the internal component but there is no material for a review at the ministry so as a result we will not be able to conduct any reviews reassignment will not be accommodated and all students were assigned to a secondary school by performance and choice and in some instances by the Ministry of Education where space was available after all their choices were exhausted so as a result of that we will not be entertaining requests for reassignment okay just a few more announcements a supplemental examination we were able to conduct between the time that we had our CPA examination and the release of results we administered the examination in some instances students took ill during the exam and the areas that they were not able to complete we gave them these papers as a supplemental to add to what CXC they were able to complete in some instances students were not able to come to the examination room at all and as a result of that we were able to assign the students and present a result slip as well so in your package principles you will see when you had students who wrote the supplemental exam you will see a result slip but I must indicate that one of the students who wrote the supplemental exam obtained a score of 95.8% and that is David Charles of the Bellevue Combined School and he will be assigned to the Viewport Comprehensive Secondary School CXC promised us booklets for each candidate and that booklet contains a breakdown of their performance in all the areas we have not received this package from CXC but as soon as we have received it we will distribute to your education offices so that principles you can collect maybe when and that will be possible when school closes okay you will be receiving your packages with your assignment students assignment slip that's what it's called not a result slip but an assignment slip it only contains information and the internal components score the external components score and the composite score and the assignment so the breakdown of their performance will be seen on the booklets on the result booklets okay in your package you also have the dates form the registration for secondary schools and just one correction for castries comprehensive secondary the registration date will be the Friday the 15th of July okay that was one change there to make I'd like to thank all our stakeholders who participated in the CPA examination ensuring that it came to tuition and to ensure that students went in with max that would allow them to obtain the grades that we saw so I'd like to commend first of all the principals for your hard work on dedication the teachers as well the students and the parents who were the bedrock and also not forgetting our country team made up of our assessment officers our education officers our curriculum officers and also special education units also our IT team a very dedicated group of young men they made it possible for us to be able to present and dissect our results and also to present you with the results I'd also like to thank our PS education officer parliamentary secretary Dr. Pauline Prosper and the minister of education for remaining with us steadfast they never gave up when I said yes we can move on yes we can move on they supported they did not for one instance say let us stop the CPA because of the information that we were getting from individuals out there so I'm happy today that we stayed steadfast and that we will focus we are hoping that next year we will be more able to deliver the internal component in the schools knowing what we faced the last year that is for the 2022 will be more prepared to provide assistance to the teachers to your schools and therefore obtain even better results for 2023 okay the chief was just mentioning this the training for grade 5 and 6 teachers we were supposed to have this training next week but we realized that what school supervision is putting on our grade 6 and 5 teachers need that training so as a result we are giving up that space to them to ensure that the teachers participate get the skills required to come into the classroom to deliver so our training will take place before school opens if principals you are going to give us that week of preparation have the training very early in the two in the new year thank you very much everybody I hand it over now gentlemen I think we all deserve a resounding round of applause especially they have done incredibly well it was truly a unified front it truly was a united in terms of its energies in terms of its deliverables everyone came together everybody collaborated from our minister our parliamentary secretaries our principals, teachers our parents underground the students everyone came together and made this possible hence the jubilation right now in the room and even monitoring on the government's facebook page also it is coming live at the end and youtube we are also witnessing the jubilation from the viewers online so again hearty congratulations to all of you we have indeed triumphed the CPEA for this year and we are looking towards better and more incredible results coming next year for billing at this time I would like to thank our members on stage thank you so very much for being present thank you for your hard work thank you to all of you thank you for being with us thank you so much as of this time I know you are excited and you cannot wait so this is the much much anticipated time you are to be receiving your individual school packages principals or vice principals or administrators in your packages you are to deliver you are to receive them towards the back of the room so our educational evaluation unit they are there to assist you in that regard thank you very much once more and a very very good morning to each and every one of you thank you