In 1970, 60.2% of all ‘A’ level Caribbean candidates who wrote the Cambridge Special Paper in History - “Emancipation And Its Results In The British West Indies, 1833-1860” - passed. The percentages of passes for 1971, 1972, 1974, 1975 and 1976 were 65.7, 60.8, 32.0, 33.3 and 39.5 respectively. These figures show a decline when the two three-year periods 1970 to 1972 and 1974 to 1976, are compared. This paper proposes to examine the factors which might have been associated with the decline in performance for the period 1974 to 1976.
The paper (i) discusses the purpose and nature of the examination; (ii) compares the examination results for two periods (a) 1970 to 1972, and (b) 1974 to 1976; (iii) compares the results for candidates from Jamaica, Trinidad and the other islands of the Eastern Caribbean as a composite group; (iv) analyses the question papers for 1972 and 1975 - the two years for which mark sheets and scripts are available; (v) assess a sample of the 1972 and 1975 scripts in order to identify specific differences in the two groups of candidates; and (vi) compares performance on this Special Paper with performance in English History and European History papers.