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‘Demented Dalek’ loses Education in UK re-shuffle
(CNS): Michael Gove, once described as the “most hated Education Secretary in history”, who spearheaded a number of major reforms of education including the transformation of many schools into academies or free schools, has been stripped of his portfolio in Prime Minister David Cameron’s Cabinet re-shuffle. As Britain gears up towards the next election, Gove’s unpopularity among teachers had become a liability. Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said the prime minister had “belatedly realised that Michael Gove’s ideological drive is no substitute for measured, pragmatic reform of the education system”.
“Time after time he has chased newspaper headlines rather than engage with teachers,” she said. “The dismantling of the structures which support schools, the antagonism which he displayed to the teaching profession and the increasing evidence of chaos in the bodies he established has led Cameron to one conclusion – Gove is more of a liability than an asset.
“Successful education systems value the views of the teaching profession, which Gove insulted when he called them ‘the blob’.”
A recent poll by the National Union of Teachers found that 79% of teachers believe that the current government has had a “negative impact on the education system” and more than 80% opposed the academies and free schools programme. 75% thought that morale in the teaching profession has fallen since the last general election.
Recently described by the NUT as "the demented Dalek on speed who wants to exterminate anything good in education that's come along since the 1950s”, Gove departure has been celebrated by teachers across the country.
Christine Blower, the NUT's general secretary, said Gove’s “vision for education is simply wrong. His pursuit of the unnecessary and often unwanted free schools and academies programme, the use of unqualified teachers, the failure to address the school place crisis and endless ill-thought out reforms to examinations and the curriculum has been his hallmark in office.
“Michael Gove’s search for headlines over speaking to the profession has clearly angered teachers. We remain in dispute over the direction of Government policy, which we believe is undermining the education service.”
Gove has been replaced by Nicky Morgan, the Minister for Women and Equality. While he and Cameron claimed that his new non-Cabinet position of chief whip was not a demotion, it is generally perceived as such.
However, the Ofsted chief, Sir Michael Wilshaw, said he was "surprised and shocked that this has happened".
"I'm a great admirer of the Secretary of State, I think he's been a transformative and radical minister of education." He said Gove had made some "substantial changes" to education, which would be lasting.
Blencathra to apologise to House of Lords
(CNS Business): The former director of the Cayman Island’s London office, Lord Blencathra, was found to have broken the rules by lobbying Parliament and MPs by the Commissioner for Standards in the UK’s House of Lords and has been ordered to apologise to the House for the inclusion in the first contract he signed with the Cayman Islands Government of a phrase that indicate that he was lobbying Parliament. The House of Lords Rules prohibit members from accepting or agreeing to accept payment or other reward in return for providing parliamentary advice or services.Read more on CNS Business
LC garbage truck driver suspended after crash
(CNS): The driver of the garbage truck in Little Cayman has been placed on required leave, following an incident on the island involving the garbage truck and property, the director of the department of Environmental Health has confirmed. CNS understands from other sources that the driver crashed the truck into government property at the island’s dump but the circumstances are unclear. In response to questions from CNS, Roydell Carter said that a staff member from Cayman Brac is going over to Little Cayman twice per week to collect garbage on that island but denied that this is affecting garbage collection on the Brac and that garbage collection is still being collected there twice weekly.
“It is a normal practice to provide work coverage on each island, as required when a staff is off work for some reason or another to try and facilitate waste collection and operations; this case in no exception,” Carter said. “At this time, it is more cost effective to send a staff from the Cayman Brac operations instead of incurring a higher cost with sending a team from Grand Cayman.”
He said, “If a staff is out of office it can impact operations but we have been doing waste collections as necessary on Saturdays to compensate. The DEH team is best managing the resources to ensure waste is collected during this period. So far, we have not been receiving many complaints from the public about the waste collection services provided on the islands.”
Operations on the Brac were expected to be back to normal by Tuesday 8 July and Carter said that “the Little Cayman situation will continue until the matter has been resolved”.
NWDA not just a job placement agency, Rivers says
(CNS Business): There are currently just over 1,400 people registered as unemployed at the National Workforce development Agency (NWDA) including 1,100 Caymanians, and over 500 employers are registered with the agency, though they are working to increase this number, according to Labour Minister Tara Rivers. She told CNS Business in today's video interview that the agency is working with employers to develop training programmes so that when people apply for jobs they have the right skill set. Within the 10 month period 1 July 2013 to 1 May 2014, over 160 people found jobs with the help of the NWDA, she told CNS Business in a video interview. Read more on CNS Business
Scholarship criteria to be critiqued
(CNS Business): The counsellor in the Education Ministry, Winston Connolly, is heading a subcommittee of the Education Council to look at the scholarship criteria and make recommendations to the Council, Education minister Tara Rivers told CNS Business in a video interview. The subcommittee will be looking at the types of colleges and universities that scholarship students currently go to, as well as what the parameters are and what they should be in order to access funding. Rivers said it was very important that Caymanians are able to continue their education to tertiary level but also important to look critically at whether we are getting value for money and whether or not the institutions are delivering the kind and quality of education expected, given the cost. Read more and watch the video on CNS Business
Academies
The Coalition for Cayman is calling on the country to adopt the ARK System of education, much loved by the UK’s Conservative education minister, Michael Gove, along with other corporate owned “free” schools and academies. But Britain’s Association of Teachers and Lecturers says they are destroying the education system “through corporate greed”.
"Our schools and colleges are proving to be a lucrative host to those who seek to bleed them dry. The number of private companies queuing up to get in on the act has trebled since 2011. Time and time again we are met with yet another scandal: whether arising from blind dogma, profiteering or just plain corruption,” Mark Baker, a senior vice-president of ATL, said earlier this year.
Nor are they the panacea that the C4C pretends. According to figures from the UK’s Department for Education, 60% of students in non-academy schools attained five A* to C-grade GCSEs in 2011, compared tojust 47% in the 249 sponsored academies that existed at that time.
Commenting on this in The Guardian in January 2012, Michael Wilshaw, the chief inspector of Ofsted and former head teacher of the much-acclaimed Mossbourne Community Academy in Hackney, east London, conceded, "Last year alone 85 schools serving the most deprived communities in our society were judged to be providing outstanding education … let me be clear: the vast majority of these schools are not academies. They are simply schools with heads and staff focused on the right things, striving every day to provide the best possible education for their young people."
Some academies are doing well, others … not so much. Nevertheless, the C4C group paid for a 2-page ad in The Cayman Compass, the Coalition’s go-to media mouthpiece, to slam the current education system and to promotethe idea of academies, and in particular ARK, which coincidentally holds 40 to 60 percent of its funds in the Cayman Islands (managed by a Cayman Islands ARK company AMML).
Of particular note is the C4C’s claim that “not charging for Pubic School Education means little value is placed on it by parents in terms of ensuring attendance or requiring satisfactory results”. It seems clear where this is going.
Among its condemnation of the public school system is the move towards the widely respected IB/PYP system in the primary schools because it “eliminates text books and relies on the internet for the students to get their information. Possibly the worst decision made in the History of the Cayman Islands,” the C4C stated in a diatribe aimed at ministry and education department heads.
Clearly they are not aware that this is where the ARK System is heading. Ark Pioneer Academy, due to open in London from September 2016, will be an all-through school where students will spend a significant percentage of their school day being taught by computer software packages, which, it is said, may provide savings by cutting the number of teachers.
But the real inconvenient truth for the C4C is that the independent and empirical gauge of student achievement in the Cayman Islands – external exam results – is showing real signs of improvement. According to the National Data Report released earlier this year by the Ministry of Education, the percentage of students achieving 5 or more level 2 passes by the time they leave school increased by 159% between 2007 and 2013. In real numbers, 88 students left Year 12 with five or more Level 2 passes in 2007. In 2013 that number was 267.
Any academy in the UK that could boast of such success would be hailed in the media. However, the Coalition for Cayman, the group that financially backed the current education minister during the elections, makes no mention of these positive developments, merely labelling education “a disaster”.
It should also be noted that this remarkable improvement in external exam results happened during a period of economic downturn, rising crime and increasing social problems, all factors that you would expect to have a negative effect on education. However, the C4C have apparently decided to ignore all facts that get in the way of the group’s agenda.
In its 2-page ad, the ‘non-party’ advocacy group invites readers to compare the results of the public school system to the private school system, forgetting to mention that private schools are inherently selective: they do not accommodate special needs students who are included in the public school statistics and whose specialist teaching is included in the public school budget.
Private schools generally do not include children from socially dysfunctional families, children who live on chips and soda, children whose parents want to do what is right but must work several jobs to survive, or children who simply do not meet the academic criteria to enter in the first place. Again, all of these needs must be met by the public schools, resulting in additional costs and a lower average exam scores.
Comparing the systems is simply demonstrating how far removed the C4C is from reality – one of the reasons most of the candidates it backed lost in the elections.
Instead of a very costly “revolution” in our education system, which would inevitably require another slew of consultants and experts and would suck up the time and energy of our education staff from top to bottom, it surely makes sense to fill in the gaps and improve the revolution already in progress rather than upend a system that is showing real results.
Everyone knows that there are areas of the education system that need to be improved but investing into the social needs of the community (such as paying people a living wage, government hiring more social workers) might have a more dramatic effect on the education results than just blaming the schools.
One point the C4C is right about is the need to restore the inspections unit, but not as they envisage as another private sector committee (a bunch of well-meaning people who think they know what they’re doing) but as it was before, made up of educators drawn from the local system as well as those recruited internationally – and no affiliation or favours owed to any ‘advocacy group’.
Meanwhile, although the minister was quick to defend herself and correct what she claimed were inaccuracies in the CNS report, she has yet to defend her staff in the education ministry or department from the demoralizing dismissal of all their efforts and successes in the C4C’s grossly misleading advertorial.
Brac graduate earns ‘Proud of Them’ award
(CNS): Government has announced that the 2014 'Proud of Them' recipient is Leshontae Missick, the valedictorian of the Layman E. Scott Sr. High School’s class of 2014, who is now taking A Levels at Cayman Prep and High School with a career goal to become a psychiatrist. Leshontae’s graduation address spoke on the subject of “Moving Forward”, a theme that referred to young people’s efforts to progress academically, as well as to make contributions to wider society. She told her classmates that rather than a new beginning, their passing-out ceremony marked a continuation of their individual goals.
“Continue to follow our dreams. I encourage you to seize the opportunities before you, and to carry on with your education. Don't give up now!” she said.
Last year, at the age of 15, Leshontae passed all ten of her exams with top grades, and is now undertaking A-Level studies. This is unsurprising, for a teen who last year filled the role of “Deputy Governor” during the annual meeting of the National Youth Parliament. She recently obtained a different perspective, filling the position of Leader of the Opposition in this year’s Youth Parliament.
Balancing academic life with extra-curricular activities during her high school years, Leshontae excelled in swimming, football, and track and field. Her talent and dedication earned her the Senior Champion Girl award from her high school.
Equally gifted in the arts, Leshontae earned several gold, silver and bronze awards in the National Children’s Festival of the Arts, in areas including dance performance, speech and poetry.
Minister for Youth Osbourne Bodden congratulated the Sister Islands recipient, saying, “We always hear about the importance of being ‘well-rounded’, but Leshontae is a sterling example of how teens can balance life in and outside the classroom. Through hard work and clear focus, they can indeed maintain direct paths to excellence in their early lives. She is truly inspirational to people of all ages.”
A beacon to her peers, Leshontae has never had a disciplinary incident. She has also served with distinction on her high school’s student council, was a prefect, and was captain of her school house, ‘Northwester’.
Community service also comes naturally for Leshontae. She was President of Cayman Brac’s Leo Club; which was a natural progression since she previously served as Vice-President. However, relocating to Grand Cayman meant that she had to step down from that position.
In her earlier years, she filled various other roles since joining the service organisation in 2008. Some pet projects included annual Christmas functions for children and the elderly, as well as environmental clean-ups.
Leshontae’s advice to her peers mirrors her personal mantra: “You will excel at whatever you put your mind to. So, put your mind to what you're good at, your passion. In the future, and regardless ofyour chosen careers, be proud of your honest living.”
DEH mops up Brac oil leak
(CNS): An oil spill at the Brac dump last week was from the used oil at the site that had been stored in deteriorating 5-gallon buckets and 55-gallon drums that were open and partially filled. According to the director of the Department of Environmental Health (DEH), who personally supervised the clean-up, there was evidence that the drums were “knocked or tipped over, either accidentally or deliberately, and those oils significantly contributed to the oil spill on site”. Roydell Carter said that some of the small plastic containers had started to deteriorate and leak but did not contribute significantly to the oil spillage. Photos of a thick layer of oil seeping directly into the ground were taken by Brac resident Dalkeith Ebanks. CNS send the pictures on to Carter and the minister responsible, Osbourne Bodden, and Deputy Premier Moses Kirkconnell, who has responsibility for the Sister Islands.
The next day, Thursday 3 July, the DEH director travelled to Cayman Brac to supervise the clean-up, along with the DEH foreman of recycling operations. Working with the DEH’s Brac team and an un-named private company, the spilled oil and soil was collected and placed in a separate area of the landfill for further processing.
“All of the remaining used oils in the small containers were transferred to new 55-gallon drums and secured on site. The area now has new soil material in place,” he stated.
Explaining how this could have happened, Carter said that, in addition to the poor storage conditions, the used oils were being stored on a sloped area, "which caused the spilled oils to accumulate in a designated area making the clean-up process fairly straight forward without any difficulty.” However, he admitted that there was “definitely room for improvements in the landfill operations and recycling programmes on the Sister Islands” and said that the staff would also undergo necessary training to improve operations.
DEH staff do monitor the site periodically, he maintained, but members of the public can bring in used oils at any time in any kind of container.
“The public can also tamper with what is on site since the landfill is unsecured at this time. Staff were aware that some containers had unsecured covers and others had secured lids but may develop slow leaks,” he said. “As previously mentioned it appeared that some used oil containers were recently knocked over or tipped over, whether deliberately or accidently.”
The director said that the DEH will make some additional improvements to the used oil storage on the Brac, which will include using a different storage area at the landfill, proper signage, use of recently acquired purpose-built oil storage and shipping tanks that can hold about 350 gallons of used oils, and transfer of the used oils when the containers are full.
“All used oils brought to the landfill site by the public in improper containers will be transferred on a regular basis to the new used old storage and shipping tanks that will soon be on site,” he said. “Meanwhile, used oils will continue to be temporarily stored in good quality 55-gallon drums that can be secured to prevent oil spillage.”
There is a used oil programme for the Sister Islands where the accumulated oil is shipped once or twice a year to Grand Cayman, Carter explained. The shipment frequency depends on used oil volumes but generally the used oils are transferred between June and July. He said the oil now at the Brac site was placed there by the public since removal last year.
“The DEH has a plan in place to remove all used oils on site this month since the new budget has been approved and this will be an ongoing programme,” the director stated.
“The DEH recycling team has already transferred the used oils at the site into new sturdy 55-gallon drums in preparation for transfer to Grand Cayman this month for further processing, where the old will be tested and combined with the other oil supplies for final shipment off-island to a recycling facility in the United States. All used oils on the Sister Islands will be shipped to Grand Cayman for further processing,” he said.
“The DEH would like the Brac public not to interfere with the oil storage area or remove any items from the landfill site as in the process they may cause an accident, spillage as they may be hurt or injured in the process if the items are not properly secured,” Carter said.
In addition, he said there would be further education of the Cayman Brac public about recycling and the need to properly store oil on the site. The plans, he said, may include closing the landfill to the public after certain hours to enable better management control of the site and to reduce and prevent incidents from occurring when the site is unattended.”
Asked about Little Cayman, he said there is a secured used oil storage area on that island which does not have any problems.
“There is definitely room for improvements in the landfill operations and recycling programmes on the Sister Islands and the public will see and hear more about the procedures and programmes this year,” he stated.
Lost Public Confidence — the case of the ODPP
I imagine that a number of good workers can be found among the many that work at the Office of the Director of Prosecutions (ODPP) – this Viewpoint is not about them. If anything, I hope it articulates their feelings that they’re unable to personally express. This Viewpoint is about those who work at the ODPP who collect a good paycheque in return for poor work, and those who instead of furthering the cause of justice impede it due to their undeserving, giant egos.
My personal experience with the former Department of Legal Services, now the ODPP, is that they are woefully disorganized, reckless, wasteful, unfocused, far too often wrong, and in way over their heads. They are usually stubborn when it comes to cases where it makes no sense for them to be so willfully obstinate and laissez-faire about cases where prosecution ought to be vigorously pursued. Far too often, as in my case and numerous others, they persecute instead of prosecute. Where common sense dictates that a person is innocent, they purposefully ignore the obvious, or often fail to recognize it.
Voltaire’s famous quote “Common sense is not so Common” must be without a doubt the ODPP’s most oft used screen saver, followed closely by “Appearance must always trump Substance” – apparently, one of the greater deciding factors as to whether or not a case is pursued. The claim that each case is carefully scrutinized is laughable at best – it ought to read that the law is applied willy-nilly, depending on the day of the week, and in which direction the wind so happens to blow.
In my case (for those unfamiliar with it) the Legal Department, in one of their more brilliant moments, wasted 21 Summary Court sessions, 8 Grand Court Sessions and 4 Cayman Island Court of Appeal Sessions over a matter of 0.004 oz of ganja (including tobacco) that did not belong to me. This, despite that 99.9% of the evidence pointed to my innocence. As some of you may recall, the ganja spliff was half smoked – if it belonged to me, as they claimed, it would have shown up in my urine test, it would have contained my DNA, etc. My urine test did not contain drugs, I was not a contributor to the DNA found on the half-smoked spliff, there was no motive for me to carry a half-smoked spliff given that I was not a ganja smoker (I was not about to gain millions of dollars by trafficking 0.004 oz of ganja into the United States), my explanation remained the same from the beginning to the end, etc.
At the time, my case was being pursued at all cost while many other cases involving far more serious charges were being routinely lost and dismissed in the Cayman Islands Summary and Grand Court. For example, between 2005 and 2010, a total of 38 cases of possession of an unlicensed firearm were dismissed in the Cayman Islands Summary Court and Grand Court. In August 2010, the Cayman Island Court of Appeal castigated the crown for appearing unprepared in front of the court – the case involved a firearm. One can only wonder what may have happened if the crown had devoted more time to their more important cases.
There are some commentators who defended Director of Prosecutions Cheryll Richards’ and the ODPP’s appalling record by claiming that the RCIPS provide the ODPP with poor, sloppy, unworkable evidence. My suggestion is that they stop pursuing those cases where the evidence does not exist to convict, no matter how badly they’re itching to get their suspect. Innocent people, and there are a few among the many guilty, should not fall prey to the ODPP's convict-at-all-cost, even if there is not evidence, mentality. More importantly, I would suggest that Ms Richards use her position and influenceto demand and bring about better work by some of her staff and some of the police.
I could write a few more pages on this matter, but I don’t have thetime, or the interest. Besides, most readers understand the problem. The fact of the matter is that the ODPP suffers from any number of maladies as a result of a lack of leadership, a lack of focus, and poor choices that they continue to make, etc. Perhaps one commentator sums up the problem best:
“They too bust trying to get Sandra Catron…LOL”
This Viewpoint is in repsonse to an article on CNS: DPP not cops' rubber stamp
Brac graduates blaze a trail
(CNS): Demonstrating just how far the education system in the Cayman Islands has progressed in less than a decade, 69.2% of students who graduated from the high school on Cayman Brac already have five or more high level passes before the results of external examinations taken this summer are known. Even under the new graduating criteria, in which the bar has been set higher so that those five passes must include maths and English for a Level 2 Diploma, 65.4% of the Layman Scott High School Class of 2014 have already reached that goal, and when the full results are known in a couple of months it is expected that these students will be the highest achieving year group in the history of the Cayman Islands. (Left: Valedictorian Leshontae Missick)
Level 2 passes are grades 1‐3 at CXC, A*‐C at GCSE or IGCSE, or the equivalent for other examination boards. 85% of the 26 Brac 2014 graduates already have a Level 2 pass in English, 65.4% in maths and 85% in science, which does not include any exams taken at the end of Year 12.
Across the system, results have been dramatically improving year on year, jumping from less than 25% getting five or more Level 2 passes by the end of Year 12 before 2007 to 70% in 2013, and while the final results for this year are not yet known, Chief Education Officer Shirley Wahler told CNS that they are hopeful that they will be at the same level.
Already across the public school system just from the Year 11 results, 73 students (14 on the Brac and 59 on Grand Cayman) have achieved a Level 2 Diploma with Honours, which is seven or more Level 2 passes including maths and English, and 21 students (two on the Brac and 19 on Grand Cayman) have achieved a Level 2 Diploma with High Honours, which is at least nine passes with grades 1-2 at CXC, A*-B at GCSE or IGCSE, or the equivalent for other examination boards. One student from Clifton Hunter High School, Diarra Hoyte, already has 16 Level 2 passes.
Watch Education Minister Tara Rivers comment on the exam results.
The CEO said that in 2005 Cayman Brac High School students set a new standard when 49% of the Year 12 graduating class achieved 5 or more Level 2 passes, which at the time was the highest percentage ever in the government system.
“That taught us that the children could achieve at that level,” said Wahler, who was principal of the school at the time. By 2012, students across the Cayman Islands public school system reached the 49% mark set by the Brac students in 2005 and last year broke all records with a 70% rate achieving 5+ passes at Level 2.
The students graduating this year from the Layman E. Scott Sr. High School (formerly the Cayman Brac High School) have set a brand new standard of achievement, where 65.4% (17 out of 26) received their Level 2 Diplomas at their graduation ceremony, reflecting what they had achieved by the end of Year 11, whereas all statistics for exam results up to this point have been on the results after Year 12. Notably, this class was the first on the Brac to graduate under the restructured Year 12, which has been in place on Grand Cayman since September 2010 with the introduction of the Cayman Islands Further Education Centre (CIFEC).
A significant factor in the remarkable improvements in exam results in the Cayman Islands has been a complete change in expectations. In 2007, Wahler said, most children were not entered into five exams so they could not possibly reach that level. There were some subjects, such as social studies, where just 20% of the students were entered because the system looked bad when the children failed. However, the result was that the Level 2 standard was only accessible to 20-30% of the school population and there was an expectation that the majority of students were not capable of reaching O Level standard, she said. Now the system is geared towards giving as many students as possible access to take those exams and raising expectation levels, an approach that has had startling results.
The Cayman Islands is the only English speaking country in the Caribbean that publishes reports on external exams by cohort, which means they include the students that did not take the exam as well as those that failed, in order to have a percentage of the population as a whole. “We’d love to have those statistics from other countries to compare ourselves to,” Wahler said.
The only statistic that they have that offers any kind of comparison is from the CXC board website, which states that in 2009 just 21.2% of students had 5 or more passes, but this is out of students who have been entered, not of all students, so it was a selective group in the first place, Wahler noted.
“So we know that we are doing far better than the region,” she said. Comparing the Cayman Islands with England and Wales, she said, “We are where they were in 2009.”
This year, for the first time, they have raised the benchmark yet again and set new graduation criteria, so that students must achieve high level passes in maths and English plus three other subjects in order to graduate with a Level 2 Diploma.
Under the restructured Year 12, those students that achieve 5+ Level 2 passes (now with maths and English) in Year 11 can begin studies at UCCI in their Year 12 towards their Associates degree or begin A Level or International Baccalaureate Diploma studies in other schools, as part of the dual entry programme. The CEO said that this gives students another huge incentive to get their Level 2 Diploma early and more students every year are reaching for and attaining this goal.
Watch Education Minister Tara Rivers discuss CIFEC's Year 12 programme
One of the challenges the Department of Education Services faces is that the entry age for Year 1, which is five years old in the UK, was four years and nine months in the Cayman Islands and this was often stretched to four years and eight or even seven months, so the Cayman children are often significantly younger than their English year-group peers. In 2012, the Cayman Islands policy changed so that entry age for Year 1 was set at 5 years old by the 31 August, as it is in the UK. However, Wahler pointed out that that those children who started school in 2012 will not be taking their exams in Year 11 for another nine years.
She also noted that many people are under the misconception that they have added a year to high school, whereas there has been a Year 12 included in the public high school system since 1988, when an additional year was included so that students essentially repeated Year 10. What they have done now is to keep the same number of years but restructure the high school to offer more options to the students.
Firstly, the opportunity to do re-sits creates a safety net. “Those children who reach the goal of five or more passes at Level 2 now have the opportunity to move ahead and they have a year head start. This encourages them to excel if they are ready,” Wahler explained. She said that failing to reach Diploma Level 2 acts as a reality check for some children, who then get a second chance. Others have a bad experience in the exams and have the opportunity to recover within the school structure.
Importantly though, the new system accommodates those young people who need something other than the traditional school subjects and gives them, in their final year, an opportunity to take vocational and technical courses with internationally recognized qualifications at the end of it, as well as getting real work experience.
Watch one employer talk about CIFEC’s work experience programme
The Year 12is a fluid and responsive programme that can be adapted each year according to the needs of the students, Wahler told CNS. She noted that, with the rising standard, they have already been asked to introduce Level 3 BTEC programmes in Year 12 in Business and Creative Media, a very practical and applied study area that ties into emerging technologies.
While the improvements so far have been outstanding, the chief education officer said that they are always looking to the next goal, which has once again been set by students on Cayman Brac.
“Where we aim to be is where the Layman E Scott Sr High School already is,” she said.
Watch more of the interview with Education Minister Tara Rivers
See related story on CNS:
Numeracy focus in schools (May 2014)
Local kids break exam records (October 2013)