Cayman Current (https://www.caymancurrent.org/tag/analysis/)
The COVID pandemic has challenged all stakeholders in the Cayman Islands education system — including teachers, parents and students — forcing them to adapt to new systems, routines and technology. The disruptions have led to negative consequences on mental health and academic progress, but lessons learnt from COVID will be carried forward to improve the education system going forward.
This is a summary of key observations gleaned from our series on the Education Data Report 2021.
On the 2021 CSEC exams, Cayman’s Year 11 students beat the Caribbean average in Maths but not in English. Here is a summary of our key observations about the 2021 CSEC results.
Cayman Islands students with potential or verified Special Education Needs and Disabilities (SEND) performed significantly worse on Year 11 exams in 2021 than their peers.
The level of student performance varies significantly among Cayman Islands public primary schools, with differences in results only partly explained by assessments of students’ pre-existing “thinking abilities”, according to the Education Data Report 2021.
In the Fall 2020 term following the closure of schools due to COVID-19, Year 6 public primary school students scored significantly worse on tests designed to measure their reasoning abilities than students had the year before the pandemic.
Year 11 students at Clifton Hunter significantly outperformed students at John Gray on 2021 external exams, following a period of 2 years where John Gray had nearly closed the gap in test scores.
Relatively poor performance on Year 11 Maths exams is the primary reason why most Cayman Islands public high school graduates fail to meet the ‘national expected standard’. However, education officials point to better-than-expected Maths results among Year 6 students as a hopeful indicator for the future.
The ‘achievement gap’ between Year 11 girls and boys in Cayman Islands public schools shrank to its smallest margin on record in 2021.
After a spike in test scores in 2020, Year 11 exam results for Cayman Islands public high schools in 2021 regressed to previous levels, with only Clifton Hunter beating its marks from 2019.