Editorial | Eye on modular math

By most public accounts, the pilot in Jamaica – before the full rollout next year – of the Caribbean Examinations Council’s (CXC) modular or bite-sized exam in mathematics went more than reasonably well.

While it wishes for the best, The Gleaner’s Editorial Board defers on the applause, awaiting clear evidence that this is not a case of the necessary hard work to fix a deep and systemic problem being side-stepped for the numbing effect of a palliative.

CXC officials, who were in the island last week for an assessment of the project’s performance of participating schools as well as teachers at Dinthill Technical High School in Clarendon, one of the six Jamaican institutions that were part of the pilot, acknowledged that there are kinks and gaps to be addressed. However, they were optimistic about the scheme’s possibilities for students who perennially struggle with mathematics.

“If you do it the same way, you get the same result,” said Dinthill’s principal, Anthony Garwood.  “Therefore, this change and this bite-sized chunking of the math curriculum should see improvement in our math grades.” 

Students, Mr Garwood said, were enthusiastic about the system. Parents were supportive. 

FACES A CRISIS 

The Caribbean, including Jamaica, faces a crisis in education outcomes. In no subject is this more apparent than in mathematics, at which over 60 per cent of regional students annually fail in the CXC’s Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) exams. 

For instance, of the 69,241 students (a decline of 12 per cent on the previous year) who sat mathematics at CSEC in May-June 2025, only 36.11 per cent received passing grades, continuing what the examination body described as the "unsatisfactory" overall performance in the subject. The 2025 pass rate compared to 36.33 per cent in 2024 and 36.88 per cent in 2022.  Forty-four per cent of Jamaican students who sat the exam passed (grades I-III) in 2025,compared to 39 per cent a year earlier.

As part of the solution to the problem, CXC has broken its mathematics syllabus into three modules, which students can sit separately to gain, for each, a Caribbean Targeted Education Certificate (CTEC) in mathematics.

“People want flexibility, they want options,” said CXC’s deputy CEO, Eduardo Ali. “They want to be able to have pathways to cater to their needs.” 

That this approach provides flexibility is apparent. Or, as Petrona Hemans-Mighty, the head of Dinthill’s mathematics department, put it, teachers can better align their assessment of a student’s readiness with the level of the maths exam they take. 

“(If) we believe that you’re ready for module one, so you can do module one,” she said.  “You can do module one and two, or you can do the entire paper.” 

SEVERAL REASONS

There are, on its face, several reasons that commend this approach to testing education standards and competence in maths - and other subjects. 

Teaching and learning can, presumably, be organised to fit the pace and specific needs of students without a student having to face the potentially terminal consequence of failing an overarching exam. That can build confidence. 

Significantly, too, without vigilance, it can lift perceived performance statistics without fundamental gains in knowledge while easing pressure on policymakers to confront the deeper problems that hinder good education outcomes.

There is the possibility, for instance, of students and teachers approaching modules of checklists or immediate hurdles to scale now  getting certification of whatever level in hand. A danger therein is a kind of cognitive fragmentation - that the basics of each bite-sized module are recalled and regurgitated for exams without ever coming together as a coherent whole. So students learn fragments of mathematics without a deep conceptual grasp of the subject.

Of course, CXC has stressed that the core of the modules is the general mathematics curriculum, but there are often gaps between these ideals and what happens in classrooms. 

Put another way, CXC and national policymakers have to be alert that modular mathematics at CTEC do not morph into a dumbed-down CSEC for children of certain backgrounds and schools for whom there may be, as George W, Bush warned a quarter-century ago with respect to marginalised students in the United States, the “soft bigotry of low expectations”.

This modular exam system can’t be a substitute for rigorous effort to understand, and fix, the causes for the Caribbean and Jamaica’s poor education outcomes, especially in mathematics, which is the foundation for STEM.

Indeed, governments already know many of the reasons for the poor performance ranging from too few qualified mathematics teachers and, especially in Jamaica, the apartheid-like hierarchy of schools and the socio-economic circumstances that constrain the ability of many children to learn.