In an effort to target the large out-of-school population needing certification, CXC will be working with private educational institutions in the coming years to reach this demographic. As part of its stakeholder engagement programme, teams from CXC have been meeting with private institutions in Participating Territories to discuss how the initiative will work.
The programme has three main objectives:
- To increase the out of school population registering for CSEC and CAPE offerings by five per cent over the next five years,
- To strengthen relationship with private educational institutions offering CXC examinations,
- To transition private educational institutions to CXC Approved Centre
A major part of the programme involves CXC helping to build the capacity of the institutions by having their members participate in CXC-sponsored activities such as marking exercise, orientation workshops, providing feedback on syllabus revision and new syllabuses, participating in item-writing training, registration as part of the virtual subject associations on Notesmaster.com, and serving as members of Subject Panels.
Another aspect of the programme will be joint promotional activities involving CXC, ministries of education and the private institutions to promote greater visibility of the private institutions at the national level.
The final strand of the programme is to encourage private educational institutions to attain a particular standard of excellence, in the form of the CXC Approved Centre designation. CXC working in conjunction with ministries of education will create the CXC Approved Centre programme. The programme will be a badge of honour for private centres that have met certain standards specified by CXC and the ministries of education. These standards will go above and beyond the requirements for the mere establishment of a private institutions. They will include academic qualifications of teachers, student to teacher ratio, adequacy of facility for the subjects being offered, among others.
Private institutions interested in participating in this programme can contact the CXC Local Registrar in your country or contact CXC at Csam@cxc.org.
I think CXC should also cover candidates who study on their own using the internet and / or textbooks and private tutors. There is a market for candidates using only Notesmaster.com and similar sources of distance instruction.
The University of London offers degrees to candidates externally and does NOT recognise any institution as its agent, although some private institutions claim to prepare candidates for the U of London degrees. Candidates prepare using a mix of different forms of instruction, including the internet, and write the examinations when they think they are ready. CXC could use this approach as a model