The Caribbean Examinations Council put preliminary CSEC and CAPE results online at noon today. For families, the number that matters is a grade on a screen. For education ministries it should be the spread between schools: Jamaica's national CSEC mathematics pass rate was 44 percent last year, but Old Harbour High posted 26 percent and Mile Gully High 9 percent.
Less than three weeks ago, CXC announced its biggest change to School-Based Assessments (SBAs) in years, because generative AI made take-home coursework hard to trust. That reform deals with cheating. It does nothing for a student in Mile Gully who needs more maths practice than one overstretched teacher can give, and AI tools aimed at learning could help there.
Jamaica's 2025 maths results by school
The 2025 figures are the baseline principals were measuring themselves against this morning, and a national average hides most of what they show.
| School | 2025 CSEC maths pass rate | Context |
|---|---|---|
| National average | 44% | Up from 39% in 2024 |
| St Elizabeth Technical High | About 43% | Lost close to a month of teaching to Hurricane Melissa |
| Old Harbour High | 26% | About 590 students across CSEC and CAPE |
| Mile Gully High | 9% | About 70 students sat mathematics |
Principals speaking to the Gleaner ahead of the release gave three reasons. Lynton Weir described newly trained maths teachers who do well for a year or two and then migrate for better pay; his own school reached 69 percent in maths in 2016. Christopher Tyme pointed to falling engagement and attendance. Keith Wellington's point was about the subject: mathematics needs more practice time than most CSEC subjects, and a school that loses a teacher mid-cycle cannot provide it.
Only 19.2 percent of Jamaican candidates passed five or more subjects including maths and English in 2025, up 1.2 points on the year before.
The same gap exists across the region
CXC's own figures put the regional CSEC maths pass rate at 39 percent across its 16 participating countries and territories in 2025, up from 36 percent in 2024. English A was 76 percent regionally in 2024. Every territory sits the same syllabus, and several face the same teacher migration.
Jamaican newspapers publish school-level results; most other territories do not. Without that breakdown, a ministry can see a national average but not which schools are at single digits, which is the information needed to decide where extra help goes.
The core argument
CXC cannot rewrite the syllabus each time a school loses its maths teacher. Governments can fund tools that let the remaining teacher keep every student practising the specific skill they are missing. No Caribbean territory has done that at scale yet, and the distance between a 9 percent school and a 44 percent average shows where to start.
What CXC changed in SBAs because of AI
On 31 July 2026, CXC confirmed that take-home SBAs in non-practical subjects are being phased out:
- Paper 32 replaces them: a supervised written assessment, with the research topic released about a month before the exam and approved reference notes allowed in the room.
- Schools can choose between the old SBA and Paper 32 from the 2027 sitting. Paper 32 becomes the default for CAPE non-practical subjects from 2027.
- Supervised assessment for private candidates in the practical sciences becomes mandatory by 2028.
- CXC is adding more moderation, random school visits, and interviews with students, teachers and principals at assessment centres.
For the 2026 cycle, a candidate who used an AI tool on an SBA had to complete a Disclosure Form saying where and how, backed by an Originality Report. CXC Director of Operations Dr Nicole Manning has said human judgement stays central to reviewing disclosures. Work found to be wholly or substantially AI-generated is treated as academic dishonesty. Candidates who used no AI need no form.
SBAs were open to copying and ghost-writing long before chatbots, but large language models made the problem big enough that CXC chose a structural fix. The reform is reasonable. It is also defensive: it stops bad submissions, and it does not help a student learn more maths.
Four ways AI can help students pass maths
Adaptive practice aimed at the missing skill
Adaptive software works out which skill a student lacks and gives practice on that skill, so a student who has mastered fractions but not ratios practises ratios. The best-known evidence comes from India: a randomised study of the Mindspark after-school programme in Delhi, published in the American Economic Review in 2019, found large gains in maths scores within about five months, with the biggest gains for students who started furthest behind. That is the practice time Keith Wellington says schools cannot provide by hand.
Early warning in October, not August
Schools already hold attendance, internal assessment and past-term grades. A simple model, or even a well-built spreadsheet, can flag students on course to fail maths by October of their final year, while there is still time to add practice. Today, that judgement depends on a teacher remembering 30 or more students per class.
More reach for the teacher who stays
No software replaces a maths teacher who has left. An AI teaching assistant can generate differentiated practice sets, mark routine exercises and run drill sessions, so one teacher covering three classes can keep more students moving while recruitment catches up.
Targeted grade reviews
The 2026 grade review window runs from 1 to 15 September at XCD 85 per subject, a real cost for many families. Analytics that flag scripts whose marks look out of line with a candidate's other results could help CXC direct reviews to likely errors.
I am confident about the first two. The third depends on teachers having devices and time to learn the tools, which the schools with the lowest pass rates are least likely to have, and that is where a pilot is most likely to fail.
What to do next
- Jamaica's Ministry of Education: use this year's school-by-school results to pick the ten lowest-scoring schools in maths and fund an adaptive practice pilot in them from September, with a baseline test now and a mock exam in March.
- Principals: by the end of October, list every final-year student whose internal maths grades and attendance put them at risk of failing, and give each one timetabled practice sessions.
- CXC: use the school visits and moderation data now being collected for SBA integrity to report, school by school, where students are struggling, and publish school-level results for all territories.
- Ministries in other CXC territories: publish school-level maths pass rates for 2025 and 2026 so that help can be targeted, as Jamaica's press already allows.
- Parents of students resitting maths: decide on a grade review before 15 September, and in the meantime work through past papers topic by topic to find the specific areas your child is missing.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do students get their 2026 CSEC and CAPE results?
Preliminary results were released on 18 August 2026 from 12 noon Atlantic Standard Time on the CXC Student Results Portal at studentportal.cxc.org. Candidates log in with their centre number, candidate number and birth certificate details. Results are preliminary until any reviews are complete, and schools receive their own copies.
Is a grade review worth the XCD 85 fee?
It is worth considering when the grade is well below what the student's school-based results and mock exams predicted, or when one grade decides a place or scholarship. A review can raise, lower or leave the grade unchanged, so a student just below a boundary with a strong record has the best case. Ask the subject teacher for an honest view before paying, and apply between 1 and 15 September 2026.
Can a student use AI to study for CSEC maths?
Yes. Using an AI assistant to explain a topic, generate practice questions or check working is ordinary study and needs no disclosure. The disclosure rules apply to work submitted for assessment, such as SBAs. When a chatbot explains a maths method, check the answer against a textbook or past paper mark scheme, because these tools still make arithmetic and reasoning errors.
What free resources can help a student practise the specific maths skills they are missing?
Start with the CSEC Mathematics syllabus, which lists the specific objectives examined, and CXC past papers, which schools and the CXC online store provide. Khan Academy is free and covers most CSEC maths topics with adaptive practice. Match each weak past-paper question to its syllabus objective, then practise that objective until the student gets it right several times in a row.
What evidence is there that adaptive software raises maths scores?
The strongest study for a developing-country setting is a randomised evaluation of Mindspark, an after-school adaptive learning programme in Delhi, by Muralidharan, Singh and Ganimian, published in the American Economic Review in 2019. Students offered the programme made large gains in maths over about five months, and the gains were largest for those furthest behind. Results depend on regular attendance and supervision, so software alone left at home produces much less.