 St. Lucia will join the rest of the region as it adopts the Caribbean Primary Exit Assessment CPEA as its new secondary placement examination for primary school students. Designed by the Caribbean Examinations Council CXC, the exam is students focused, granting students the opportunity to be assessed throughout their final year in primary school and entering the exam with 40% of their final grade. The focus is on developing competency in critical literacies with a sharper emphasis on skills across thematic areas such as mathematics, language, civics, and science. Registrar of examinations Kamalita Matthew says that the exam will allow students to engage in a blended assessment, allowing them to work towards their final score throughout the school year. This she says will take away the anxiety of the big day and also allow students to focus on core competencies and not content. This examination is a very, it's very helpful to the student in that it provides them with an avenue for growth throughout the year, preparing them for secondary school education and also it gives them that ability to be more assertive and also to know that they are going into the examination room with some marks already because it's 40% for the internal component and 60% for the external component. So parents have been providing assistance and yes, if everything new there is all, we always have ages and so on, but I think we are satisfied right now with the way that we are moving and that the students will perform to their best. The modality of the exam will be quite different as testing will take place over a course of two days following the CXC regional schedule. May 12, 2022, students will write mathematics and social studies and on May 13, language and science, with none of the exams being longer than one hour and 15 minutes. The registrar of examination says that CXC will co-late the composite score of students and assignment of students to secondary schools will follow the same guidelines of the past. So the assignment of students to secondary schools will be done by Central Asia, okay? Our IT unit will be assisting us. When we receive the grades from CXC, we will be doing the assignments. So students have already chosen their schools and we will be using that to make the assignments. So our IT technical officers, they have done our assignments previously and they will be engaged in it this year. The Department of Education, Innovation and Vocational Training thanks all stakeholders for being part of the transition, noting that the implementation was tedious, especially on the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic. This primary group of students will be the first to be assessed and write the CPEA examination. The Caribbean Primary Exit Assessment was introduced to replace the National Combinations examination for the first time in 2012 throughout the region. From the Communications Unit of the Ministry of Education, Sustainable Development, Innovation, Science Technology and Vocational Training, I am Daniel Dubois reporting.