By Guevara Leacock
On A View from the Outside this week, we turn our attention to the government’s policy to pay examination fees for Vincentian students taking the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) examinations from May to June 2027, with the view being that this is a genuinely good thing done for Vincentian families, especially Vincentian children.
This week, the Ministry of Education sent a circular to the principals of secondary schools and technical institutes in St. Vincent and the Grenadines asking them to submit a list of the students sitting the 2027 CXC examinations. The circular indicated that the government would pay the entry fee and the per-subject fee for every eligible candidate on the list through the office of the CXC Local Registrar.
Schools are not to collect examination fees from parents or guardians. The state will fund up to nine subjects for each student, counted together across three exams offered by CXC, namely the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations, the Caribbean Targeted Education Certificate (CTEC) examinations and the Caribbean Vocational Qualification (CVQ) examinations.
The Ministry of Higher Education is expected to confirm similar arrangements for students sitting regional examinations in post-secondary educational institutions in the coming weeks.
The ministry added that nine is a ceiling and not a target, and that a child will be entered only for the subjects they have actually been prepared for. Some have been critical of this stance, suggesting that it will limit children. In education, there is a principle called constructive alignment, which means that, amongst other things, students should only be examined on what they are taught.
The requirement that a candidate be entered only for subjects they have been prepared for protects our children from being put in for examinations they have not been adequately prepared for. We on a View from the Outside say this is a safeguard for the child and not a barrier.
This policy will be a huge relief for many Vincentian households, especially in the current difficult economic climate where many Vincentian families are struggling to keep afloat or, as we say, “make ends meet”. A Vincentian mother with two children sitting examinations in the same year does not have to find money to pay two sets of examination fees in the same month, where she has to pay VINLEC half of her wages, rent or a mortgage, house insurance, buy food, books, find lunch money, pay bus fare or buy petrol for a vehicle.
A Vincentian father working one job does not have to decide whether his child, who is capable of taking eight subjects, should choose the five he or she is most interested in because that is all he can afford.
There are reports that several Vincentian students could not take these regional examinations up to last year because their parents could not afford the fees for even a single subject. Every principal or teacher reading this View knows at least one such child by name. From this academic year, that reason disappears.
We on a View from the Outside acknowledge that the previous government had initiatives which offered assistance to some families to pay for subjects for students. However, the distribution of this assistance was often selective and politically partisan. What is being offered now is a comprehensive programme backed by policy and an election promise to pay the examination fees for all students taking regional examinations in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
We should not forget families in the Grenadines. A family in Bequia, Canouan, Mayreau or Union Island with a child sitting regional examinations has already been paying boat fare, and in many cases board and lodging on the mainland for five years. Every cost you take off of their educational bill matters a whole lot.
While the fees for a single subject might not be a large amount on the government spreadsheet. In a household where resources, including income, are limited, it is a large amount. Multiply that by nine subjects and two children it is the difference between possibility and impossibility.
These examinations are a gateway. They are not the only gateway but they are a gateway for young Vincentians to become adult citizens who contribute to the development of St. Vincent and the Grenadines and the world. Without these qualifications, a young Vincentian may not be able to attend the Community College, sit advanced examinations, apply for the nursing programme, the teaching service, the police force or the public service.
Without these foundational qualifications, their chances of soaring outside of St. Vincent and the Grenadines might be limited or delayed.
There is also a historical element to this issue that every Vincentian should know. The CXC was established in 1972, when the governments of 15 English-speaking Caribbean territories signed the agreement in Barbados. The first CSEC examinations were sat in May/June 1979. That is the same year St. Vincent and the Grenadines became an independent country.
The Caribbean, our region, built its own examination, for our own children, taught from syllabuses we created, in the same year we, as Vincentians, took charge of ourselves. It took 47 years for the state of St. Vincent and the Grenadines to pay for Vincentian children to take these examinations. Something Barbados and other Caribbean islands with a similar history have been doing for decades. This is an example of what We on a View from the Outside meant when a few weeks ago we said, “Independence still Coming” — bring it on.
Do you remember how this used to work? For 24 years under the Unity Labour Party (ULP) government, Vincentian parents found that money themselves. Some borrowed it, others sold things, some begged and some went without. That is what the ULP branded the “Education Revolution”, and Vincentians heard that phrase for the better part of 24 years.
Let us be clear, there were positive changes to education under the ULP. Access to secondary and post-secondary education widened tremendously. Hundreds of teachers across the system were trained and obtained a diversity of qualifications. Several schools were built.
There is a gap, though, between granting access to every student to enter secondary school and then being unable to complete the process because your parents cannot afford to pay your examination fees and perhaps they can’t receive any help because their politics is of the wrong hue.
As recently as May this year, the ULP leadership was on the radio warning Vincentians that the Education Revolution is now being dismantled. But during all of the years of the revolution, the examination at the end of it was still paid for by parents. Vincentians can decide for themselves what to call a revolution that never got as far as the examination fee. Access does not mean success.
This policy was a manifesto promise the New Democratic Party (NDP) made before the general election of November 2025. This week, as a government, they put the instruction in writing to every principal in the country. We on A View from the Outside often spend time telling the government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines where it has fallen short. This week we offer them a hearty round of applause.
This is a government that has told Vincentians plainly that our debt stands at 113% of what the economy produces in a year, that the deficit is unsustainable, and that there are unpaid bills on its books. It would have been the easiest thing in the world, with figures like those, to tell Vincentians that the examination fees promise would have to wait for a better year. It did not. The government found the money to help Vincentian children. This is an investment in your children and the country. This is the generation that will kill each other less and be more productive.
To every parent and guardian reading this View from the Outside, support your children and encourage them to do well. To every student in fifth form, listen to the Mighty Sparrow and “go to school and learn well”. The money to pay for your subjects is not your or your parents’ problem anymore. But nothing in life is free; the examination fees are paid for by the state via taxes collected from working people and monies raised from external sources. Do not waste this opportunity or these resources.
So in the coming days, when somebody tells you that the government is not keeping its promises, tell them about this. Tell them that from 2027, no parent of an eligible student in one of our schools pays an entry fee or a subject fee for CXC. Tell them it covers the technical and vocational subjects in the same way as the academic subjects. Tell them a child can be funded for up to nine subjects. Then ask them whether the children in their own house are on the list, because a good policy still needs good parents to check. Let us make sure every child benefits from this.
*Guevara Leacock is a barrister at law of Lincoln’s Inn in England and an attorney at law in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. He has a keen interest in history and politics and is a social commentator.
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