Archive for September 26th, 2010

Teaching and learning

Given the depths to which education in the Cayman Islands was allowed to plumb, a continued national conversation on what and how our children are taught is vital. However, it’s a pointless exercise unless the public keeps up with what is happening in the delivery of education and what changes and improvements have already been made – and why.

Right in the middle of massive and well publicised changes to the whole education system, there is a constant cry that we need to reform education. How can we have any meaningful discussion as to what the aims and objectives are and whether new initiatives are working if the public has not even acknowledged that change is afoot?

Periodically, there are comments on CNS that government schools need a new curriculum, even though this was introduced two years ago and is now under its scheduled review. A discussion about what is good and bad about the 2008 National Curriculum, what works and what doesn’t is a good thing, but if you haven’t read it you need to do so before your opinion has any relevance.

And please! Stop saying we need to introduce (or reintroduce) vocational studies when this has already happened. We need to get on to the next stage of discussion. Are they the right subjects? Are they effective?

It’s time for everyone to stop fussing about “graduation” from high school and focus on what is actually important: external, internationally recognized exam results (including the vocational exams). Government schools provide a UK style of education, which means that graduation is a nice ceremony, a rite of passage perhaps, but it is not a qualification or an academic achievement and never was.

Graduates, take those certificates that were handed to you during the graduation ceremony, be proud of them, hang them on the wall … but don’t bother taking them to a job interview or including them in a college application because they are academically meaningless. Similarly, if you didn’t graduate because you fell short of the requirements, including attendance and behavior (and more power to the Department of Education Services for insisting on this) it’s not the end of the world.

Here’s the important question: how many exams did you pass and what grades did you get?

Part of the confusion here in the Cayman Islands is that people look at North America, or went to school in the US or Canada, where a high school diploma actually means something, and assume the same applies here. It doesn’t. In Britain and countries that follow the British school system there is no such thing as a high school diploma. The conversations needs to stick to improving exam results not stray into why students can graduate without academic achievement — an entirely irrelevant discussion.

Among the many changes going on, the most drastic is the restructuring of the high schools to a 5+1 system.

In the UK, children go to high school when they are 11 and take their GCSE’s or equivalents when they are 15/16. (In fact, in an increasingly competitive academic environment there is a trend for the most able students to take some GCSE’s early at 14/15 or even younger.) There is a range of options available following this including, especially for students aiming for university, two-year A-level courses, Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate diplomas. A-level studies are broken down into a 1-year AS course, followed by a second year leading to A-level exams. At university, undergraduates take a 3-year bachelor’s degree.

In the US and Canada students remain at high school for six years, earn their high school diploma and then go on to a 4-year university course.

Back in the early 1990’s it was decided that the Cayman Islands government schools, despite the fact that they followed the UK system, would stretch the five years of high school into six – the kids would be a year older before they went to college or left school for the job market and it would give them an additional year to take their exams, hopefully raising the rather poor achievement levels. It didn’t. In fact, results got even worse and have been consistently dismal ever since.

The system also served the top students badly; those who headed off to a college in the US may have been given a year to mature emotionally but they had not been provided the opportunity to take pre-college courses to prepare them for the rigours of university study, especially in mathematics, where many struggled.

The Education Ministry is doing the right thing bringing Cayman back into line with the UK and everywhere else in the world that uses the same system. Last year’s Year 11 took their exams at the appropriate time.

The construction of the new schools tends to grab all the attention but we also need to focus our attention on the teaching and learning aspects of education. The current education minister is at pains to avoid acknowledging what the previous minister achieved but does appear to be doing the right thing: assessing the changes, continuing the things that worked and adapting the things that didn’t.

Let’s be clear: an historical average of 24% of students achieving 5 or more Level 2 passes is a big fat fail. Radical change is desperately needed, so let’s all keep up with what’s happening so we can discuss those changes productively.

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