Dr Wheatley told BVI News preparations for the exams are in full swing and said Flow Study has been a big help for students in that effort.

“I am particularly grateful to Flow for making the Flow Study learning platform available to the public at a free cost - and that is a platform that helps with preparations for CXC - as well as our teachers who going about preparing our students for the exams,” Dr Wheatley said.

“We anticipate that we will do well despite the circumstances. After the storms in 2017 we had pretty good results, so it shows that we are resilient and that we are able to handle adversity,” he stated.

Online testing nothing new for BVI

Dr Wheatley also said the e-testing modality is one which the BVI is fully capable of using, considering the territory has used it in the past.

“One factor that is working in our favour is that we already did our exams electronically and that helps tremendously given the COVID-19 situation. That was one proposal by CXC with the electronic format, which some member states were not as equipped to do as here in the BVI because we have already done it fully online,” he stated.

July date best option

The Education Minister said the BVI had proposed the July date to CXC since it was a date which would cause minimal disruptions going into the next school year.

According to CXC, the results for those exams will be released in the first week of September.

“We anticipated that we would be ready for that particular time … and persons wanting to matriculate on to other institutions will be able to do so at the appropriate time,” he explained.

CXC’s exam strategy

For the 2020 exams, CXC decided to administer Multiple-choice papers for this year’s sitting.

The final grades will be determined by the results of the multiple-choice coupled with School-Based Assessments. Paper 032s will be used as the SBA alternative for private candidates.