The Cayman Islands Ministry of Education released a statement regarding the Cayman Islands Examinations Results in 2016 – see iNews Cayman story “Statement from the Ministry of Education on Cayman Islands Examinations Results in 2016” published May 15 2016.

The commencement of the statement took great pains to refute media and social network reports that the National Education Data report 2016 was leaked. The Ministry of Education said that the report was published on its website on April 24th, 2017 (www.education.gov.ky).

I have to verify it is published there but it took me over five minutes of searching to find it. I am not going to tell you where it is, just see how long it takes you! If I hadn’t been determined to seek it out I would have given up, believing the Report was not there.

The Report doesn’t make good reading although the writers have done an excellent job of highlighting the few good pieces.

“At the secondary (high school) level the overall trend has been one of improvement over time as well”. It does add “although when measuring the benchmark of 5 plus subjects including English and maths at Year 11, students are not yet meeting their CAT predictors.” This is countered by, “However, CAT predictors are being met by the end of Year 12. It is worth noting that Year 12 is the end of secondary education.”

Why is the latter, “worth noting”?

“When looking at Year 11 specifically, for the 2015-2016 academic year, there was a marginal decline in CAT performance compared to the previous year’s figures” the Report continues.

They are OK with the “marginal” decline in CAT performance that was not actually outstanding in 2015 and the Report takes comfort:

“This can be attributed to an overall under-performance in mathematics seen throughout the Caribbean region in 2016. The Caribbean Examinations Council quoted the following about the region’s performance in mathematics: “There was a 13-point decline in performance in Mathematics with 44 per cent of entries achieving acceptable grades this year compared with 57 per cent in 2015.” (CXC website: http://www.cxc.org/csec-results-2016/).”

Do we really care that the rest of the Caribbean schools also show a decline?

“Analysis of examination results including supporting documentation from Examination Boards identifying areas for improvement. Action plans are developed and implemented by schools as next steps using this information.
· Barriers to student learning
· Early identification of gaps in student learning
· Early intervention to close these gaps
· Building capacity at all levels of the system”

To be fair there were some improvements:

“At the Secondary Level (High School):
· Science: 2014 – 17.8%, 2015 – 35.7% and 2016 – 55.4%. This improvement is attributed to changes in strategies and intervention according to student need.
· English: 60.8% in 2016 compared to 59.4% in 2015”

The Report says these TWO are “core subjects”.

One of our media houses compared the results to the british funded schools where there was significantly higher grades. In the same story (https://www.caymancompass.com/2017/05/15/school-exam-results-stagnant/) Jon Clark, principal of John Gray High School, cautioned against comparing figures with the U.K. system where a much smaller percentage of students go to private school. He said it was not uncommon for John Gray to lose 10 of its top performing students at Year 9 to go, on scholarships, to Cayman’s private schools.

“We would never stand in their way if they and their parents make that choice, but it is worth noting that those sort of things do impact national results.”

Therefore, although there is room for much improvement, it is not all doom and gloom. Unfortunately there is enough gloom for the would be MLA’s to have a field day.