It is staggering for me to read the reports on our education system that despite significant progress in schools over the last few years most Caymanian schools would be in ‘special measures’ if they were in the United Kingdom!

So what would they have been categorized before this “significant progress”?

Whenever we get these reports from outside consultants that have been read and then released, the department in question looks closely to find some words of comfort.

I find their “words of comfort” even more damaging. It would have been better to have said nothing except “it is appalling and these are the steps we are going to take to improve”.

For an education system to fall so low over the years is APPALLING!! I hope you are reading this former education minister Rolston Anglin who seemed to find it a good example to set to his pupils attending his schools to be drunk in charge of a car! Although his excuse is sleep apnea probably caused by worrying about the mess of an education his pupils were getting from his leadership or lack of it.

So now we have an action plan instigated by the current minister, Tara Rivers, that she feels is realistic and obtainable.

However, the data report was not going to be released this year because of “problems with the quality of the data used”. How did this come to be? Who was responsible for providing the consultants with this inadequate data? Surely we have a right to know how this came to be. We are the people who pay for it? Of course, “the individual responsible at the time was no longer employed by government”. How convenient.

Who is he or she? Can we have a name so we can interview this individual? I am sure the person won’t agree with any of that!

The chief officer in the ministry, Christen Suckoo, said it was essential the information being used was “accurate and transparent”. Of course. Essential. So why wasn’t this spotted BEFORE and not AFTER. And why would someone be given the task when the person was now no longer working for the education department? Was this known before or arrived at after finding out the data collected had ““inconsistencies”?

So the teachers are critised for bad teaching practices? How come the education department were able to find all these bad teachers? Was this shown on their records they were bad teachers before they were employed or did it just happen when they arrived here from overseas? They came to enjoy the sun, the sand and the sea, and not execute their jobs properly? Or were some of these bad teachers local? Or were these bad teaching methods due to them following directives from their superiors?

“Teaching is pitched at the wrong level, learning is slow and explanations are lengthy, so students’ concentration wanes and behaviour deteriorates,” says the report. “In too many lessons, the teaching is uninspiring, students become disinterested, behaviour deteriorates, and little is accomplished. In some lessons, where behaviour deteriorates, maintaining discipline rather than fostering students’ learning becomes the main focus of the lesson or alternatively an over-emphasis on discipline stifles students’ interest and involvement. Expectations of all students are too low, with few reaching above expected levels at the end of Key Stage 2.”

To me, some of it must be leveled at the directives and the bad behaviour from their parents.

I do not believe it is at all fair to blame it all on bad teachers.