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(iii) assure the consistency of grade standards across years, subjects, and
examination sessions.

Highlights of TAC Findings and Recommendations
85. FAC heard that e-marking is an important step taken by CXC to modernize its

examinations operations and that this provided a number of benefits, including increased
quality assurance and improved marker reliability. TAC noted, however, that there were some
issues which required attention in order to optimize the benefits of this innovation. Chief
among these was the need to consider ways in which the lessons of the last five years helped
to shape the refinement of the examinations administration and processing procedures to
improve efficiency at all stages from preparation for marking to the completion of marking
and grading.

86. FAC noted that for May-June 2017 there were two significant challenges to the timely
completion of the grade awarding process. The first was the non-completion of the marking
exercise for a number of subjects within the scheduled time. This problem was similar to that
which was evident in the 2016 exercise however, more subjects were affected. The other
significant challenge was what appeared to be a systems issue which affected the rate at
which the SBA moderated scores could be uploaded and integrated with the scores from the
other examination papers to generate the composite scores required for the grading exercise.

TAC was advised that this challenge was linked to the electronic submission of an increased
number of SBAs and the e-marking of SBAs this year for the first time.

87. FAC noted that several measures were employed to address these challenges. These
included:

(i) The rescheduling of SAC meetings to allow for the generation of the reports
required by SACs for the grade awarding recommendations. This rescheduling
achieved some degree of success but the data required were not available for
several subjects. This impinged on the time normally available to TAC for its
reflection on the often insightful engagement with the various SACs.

(ii) The generation of reports for subjects once approximately 50 percent of the
composite data set for candidates were available. This generated score and
grade distributions that are good estimates for the total candidate population.

(iii) The use of the unmoderated SBA scores for some subjects where this is not
normally done, to generate the reports required by the SACs to make the grade-
awarding recommendations. Past experience and a review of data for a sample
of subjects in this year’s marking exercise suggested that the unmoderated
teacher score for most schools were satisfactory for this purpose even though
moderation must be maintained in a number of subjects to ensure that all
schools are brought in line with the CXC standards.

88. FAC further noted the commitment of CXC, as was customary, to review all preliminary
reports used by the SACs for the grade awarding decisions once the moderated SBA scores

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