Chief education officer to retire
(L-R) Ministry Counsellor Winston Connolly, Education Minister Tara Rivers and CEO Shirley Wahler
(CNS): Chief Education Officer Shirley Wahler has informed her staff and the ministry that she will be taking early retirement very shortly, having been offered an unexpected opportunity elsewhere that she has decided to accept, CNS has learned. During the seven years that Wahler has led the department, the external exam results of graduating students shot up dramatically by 159% and she has guided the education system through a period of transformation in which practical vocational studies were incorporated into the Year 12 curriculum.
The CEO is leaving at a time when, despite the obvious improvements that have resulted from the system’s reforms, the current minister appears to be heading towards changing course and switching to a charter school system, promoted in Britain by the ousted former Tory education minister, Michael Gove.
While the Cayman Islands Education Ministry, for reasons that are as yet unexplained, has never published the final exam results for the graduating Class of 2014, preliminary results indicated that the Year 12 students surpassed the record-breaking Level 2 pass rate of the Class of 2013, continuing the year-on-year improvements in standards.
The Year 11 pass rates are also believed to have also bettered those of the year before, but these results have also been withheld by the ministry.
Wahler was promoted to chief education officer from her post as principal of the Cayman Brac High School (since renamed the Layman Scott High School) in 2006 during the first PPM administration, working with the education minister at the time, Alden McLaughlin. After a year in the UK, where she took a Masters’ Degree in Education at Durham University, she took up the CEO position at a time when only about a quarter of students who finished high school achieved 5 or more O-Level passes. By 2013 this figure improved by an astonishing 159%.
Although the ministry is strangely reluctant to celebrate the students’, teachers’ and the department’s success, this statistic is believed to be even better after last year’s results.
At the Annual Education Professionals’ Welcome in August Wahler told teachers that there has also been a dramatic improvement in literacy and numeracy in primary schools. She told teachers that results for English Level 2 pass rate for the graduating students, “which were so spectacularly high last year”, were even higher, with a preliminary result of 68.5%. But, she said, “the real story” was the mathematics results, which jumped more than 9% over last year’s figures to 46.1%.
Pointing to the startling improvements in results in just two years (from 2011 to 2013) from 45% to 70% of students achieving five or more Level 2 passes, the CEO said that level of change took England 13 years to achieve.
“The comparison to our Caribbean neighbours is even starker,” Wahler said, noting that the overall benchmark figure for the Caribbean region hovers around 22%. “And our journey is by no means over,” she added.
As well as a sustained year-on-year rise in high school results, Wahler said the percentage of Year 6 students who achieved National Curriculum Level 4 “shot up” last year. Reading results were up 21%, writing results were up 13%, and maths results rose by 8%.
“It is important that our students know, that our parents know and that our community knows and understand what you, our teachers, through the performance of your students, have achieved,” she told the teachers.
The CEO has referred to the reform of the local education system as “uniquely Caymanian” and has said that 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.
Wahler’s departure from the local education system follows that of Mary Rodrigues, the ministry’s chief officer, in August. Rodrigues is now heading a new unit charged with overseeing implementation of the Ernst and Young report on the rationalisation of the public service.
Related articles on CNS:
Below is a page from the The National Education Data Report 2013, which is on the ministry website. In real numbers, 88 Year 12 students left school with 5 or more Level 2 passes in 2007. In 2013 that number was 267.
Category: Education, Local News
And why has it taken so long to fill the vacancy that was identified in January 2014 when the postholder indicated that he was leaving? Believe me, not one single suitable candidate applied for the job in the first two rounds of advertising and the Ministry brought back an expat whose key job was to try and convince Caymanian Principals to apply (with the carrot of a hugely increased salary on that originally advertised). The SSIOs in post for the last four years have line managed all of the Principals, but have been earning less than some of them. We’ll see who ends up as CEO. It won’t be pretty.
A bit scary to think who they will put in her place. My guess is someone who is already failing in what they are doing. Unless they actually do the sensible thing and don’t replace but use this opportunity to consolidate and bring the ministry and department together. Now if Ms Rivers was actually to pull that off, then her tenure would not have been a total failure.
An opportunity yes, but one that will be wasted with ill conceived decisions. I despair for this country and how poorly we are served by all our leaders. They cannot fix the problems because they just do nit understand their complexities. They just keep shuffling the same old incompetent professionals around. But what does it matter, as long as their friends and voters are kept on side.
Oh dear God please let them not commission another expensive report to see how to bring the Ministry and Department together.
What an astonishing loss for the Department and for the children of the Cayman Islands.
Yet more uncertainty for the teachers of the Cayman Islands.
A timely opportunity to finally bring together the department and ministry perhaps?
Best wishes to Ms Whaler in her new post. One question though, why, in the face of such astounding improvements is Tara Rivers and the Premier hell bent on leading our education system down a new path that has proved both in the USA and the UK to have dubious results at best. Has she never heard about building on success, maintaining a steady course, listening to her local educational experts? I guess not. The order of the day seems to be dogma from a Minister who knows absolutely nothing about education and its complexities. Watch out folks for the education system to be thrown into turmoil.
Indeed it would appear in the wake of the Auditor Generals reports of the various departments failing, in particular the most recent one of the Post Office, the one thing that is improving is education. Yes it has problems but its changing and Rome was not built in a day.