Ed minister blames pandemic for poor grades

| 10/05/2023 | 78 Comments
Minister Juliana O’Connor-Connolly (file photo from social media)

(CNS): Education Minister Juliana O’Connor-Connolly has said the community should recognise the positive developments and improvements at government schools regardless of concerns about the poor 2022 results. The minister explained that, because of the pandemic, grades in 2020 were achieved through teacher-assessed grades rather than standardised external tests. She also noted that the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) was one of a very small group of boards that administered external exams that year.

“Countries that used these international and regional exam boards saw a decrease in the percentage of high-level grades for 2022 compared to 2021,” the minister said in a statement defending the work of her ministry. “Worldwide, the percentage of 2022 high-level passes was similar to those achieved in 2019. The same is true for the Cayman Islands, where math scores for Year 11 in 2022 were statistically equivalent to those in 2019.”

O’Connor-Connolly said there was evidence outside of the Data Report released by the ministry that school improvement overall has been raised. Compared to the previous inspection cycle in 2018/2019, government schools showed notable improvements during the 2022 cycle, with the number of criteria across schools judged ‘weak’ falling significantly.

“Government schools have made noteworthy progress during the inspection cycles,” the minister said. “The lack of negative evaluations in the areas assessed by the OES indicates that schools are working hard to attain excellence.’ Last year, there were no weak judgements by inspectors in secondary schools in categories of ‘assessments’, ‘curriculum’ or ‘teaching’, the ministry said. Inspectors recorded improvements for government primary and secondary schools in the area of ‘positive behaviour for learning’.

The minister admitted that there are problems when it comes to mathematics. Just 42% of students at the end of Year 6 reached the expected level in mathematics last year. However, she noted that Cayman is not the only country dealing with poor maths results because it related to the way results were arrived at in 2020 and 2021, given the disruption to learning by COVID-19.

“Overall, student attainment in math was not ideal,” she said. “This is not an isolated issue in the Cayman Islands, as there has been a global decline in student performance in mathematics compared to 2020 and 2021. One of the factors impacting this reality in 2020 is the manner in which grades were assigned to students by examining boards, through teacher-assessed grades rather than standardised external tests.”

The minister continued, “Despite expectations, public schools are adding value to students in math, English, and science. The Year 11 group in 2022 performed better than expected by over ¾ of a grade point on average in all three subjects. Additionally, they exceeded expectations by over a grade point in English and science. The ministry is taking steps to enhance students’ progress and academic performance in math.”

O’Connor-Connolly said the ministry was implementing the Schools Numeracy Strategy, which includes training for school leaders in the National Centre for Excellence in Teaching Mathematics (NCTEM) Mastery Pathway.

“Our educators are also participating in professional development sessions to improve students’ confidence and support teaching fundamental math concepts,” she said. “Once fully trained, school practitioners will use a combination of diagnostic, formative, and summative assessments to determine the level of intervention, consolidation, or enrichment needed for each student.”

Fourteen specialist maths teachers are being recruited to be placed in primary schools at the start of the 2023/2024 academic year.

“We understand that it takes time to see improvements in student performance. Research has shown that it typically takes around three years to see successful changes in an elementary school and up to six years in a secondary school,” noted O’Connor-Connolly, who has said she is retiring from politics at the next election in 2025.

“Our ministerial programmes and initiatives, initiated by the DES, demonstrate our schools’ steady progress over time. Our commitment to providing the best educational opportunities for our children remains strong,” she added.


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Category: Education, Local News

Comments (78)

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  1. Anonymous says:

    Religion, racisim and covid- all good excuses

  2. Anonymous says:

    You get what you pay for.

    • A Caymanian says:

      The truth seems to be an offense in our beloved Cayman Islands. Let’s examine: From way back when the Ministers of Education have tinkered with the system following advice and not really being engaged in an exercise to determine what and how we needed to educate our children for the 21st Century. You had the likes of Hon Truman Bodden, and the indomitable Sir Alden and others who only wanted to have a place in history by having their names in stadiums and being known as the creators of new style university like campuses for our children but nary a plan of excellence in Education.

      Not much more can be said than we need to have a plan which is measurable and adaptable to achieve quantifiable goals snd objectives in education of our children. I am sure that the resources we owns today can be of further value if we plan and execute a viable plan.

  3. Anonymous says:

    It’s clear that we need to do better.

    The question is, how do we, as Caymanians, prevent this from happening again? How can we ensure that our Education Ministers are qualified to lead and effectively shape our education system? The education of future generations should not be held hostage by a political system that does not serve the people, nor by an Education Ministry that refuses to take responsibility or be held accountable for poor performance.

    We can look to countries with high-performing education systems, such as Singapore and the Scandinavian nations, to learn from their successful strategies. These countries place a strong emphasis on teacher quality, rigorous curriculum standards, and an unwavering commitment to fostering student engagement and well-being.

    In Singapore, for example, educators are well-respected and undergo thorough training, leading to a highly professional and motivated teaching force. Additionally, their curriculum emphasizes critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving, which are essential skills for the modern workforce.

    Scandinavian countries, on the other hand, focus on creating a supportive and inclusive learning environment for all students, regardless of their background. Their education systems prioritize early childhood education, which lays a strong foundation for learning, and they allocate resources equitably to ensure that all students have access to high-quality education.

    To adapt these successful strategies for the Cayman Islands, we must first invest in our teachers by offering competitive salaries, professional development opportunities, and support in implementing effective teaching practices. We should also consider revising our curriculum to promote critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving, while fostering a supportive and inclusive learning environment.

    Lastly, we must hold our Education Ministry accountable for implementing these changes and continually assessing their effectiveness. By learning from the best practices of high-performing education systems, we can tailor our own system to better serve our students and prepare them for a successful future.

    Whoever requests to run or is assigned to this ministry, ABOVE ALL OTHERS, needs to be scrutinized to the most high. No more riff raff. We are in crisis mode whether you realize it or not.

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    • Anonymous says:

      3:31, you did not mention a very very large part of the success of the Singaporean and the Scandinavian students in addition to the elements you identified. I refer to PARENTS and their expectations of and support for their children. We just do not have that here in Cayman except to some degree in the private schools and, alas, among predominantly expat parents.

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      • Think critically please says:

        A very very large part huh? Is that you making an Assumption or fact based on data? And you know this how? How does that address our sham political system or our exorcizing principals?
        It wasn’t mentioned because it has nothing to do with the point that was being made.

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    • Anonymous says:

      Completely agree, however, first we need to stop voting in morons. Let’s be totally honest, we have this disgrace of a Minister of Education because she fraudulently paved voters driveways and is directly or indirectly related to half of her voting pool.

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    • Anonymous says:

      We believe teacher’s salary here are very good, please compare to other countries so we can see.

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  4. Anonymous says:

    She must think the public is stupid to believe this crap she is trying to feed us. Paying teachers more money and poor results. Don’t get me wrong parents have a role to play as well in their children’s education, but this is the first place I ever heard of getting more money for poor and disgraceful results.

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    • Anonymous says:

      It is a known fact that the government schools are not doing as well as they should. Instead of the Minister pulling excuses out of her hat she should use the rest of her time before retirement to implement assessments by specialist in the field. (Preferably from renowned institutions from Overseas who will be more objective) to find out out the exact reasons why our children are failing. It makes absolutely no sense to let things remain as they are. At the end of the school year we hear the same excuses over and over. The parents should be expected and should make themselves available for meetings with these specialists after the assessments are done so that they are aware of what they can do to assist the schools andtheir children. When my kids were in the Middle School, and High school, I was on the PTA association and too many times too many parents did not bother to show up for reporting sessions nor PTA meetings. I realise that some couldn’t because of work schedules etc. However, it was obvious that students whose parents were involved in the school life had better outcomes. I know once the student reaches high school most parents are unable to assist with home work , projects etc but that does not mean that your work is done. Parents have to set the environment in the home that is conducive to studying. Parents have to have a good relationship with all the teachers to be able to get valuable feedback on your students. If your child is not motivated you have to find out why. They have to have nutritious meals at home and at school, they have to have good lighting in the room they use for studying, etc. teachers cannot do it alone, they need the parents and parents need the teachers. I also believe a more diverse complement of teachers would hugely benefit the students.

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    • Anonymous says:

      We can blame Covid but for so long. The education was failing way before covid and still.

    • Anonymous says:

      We believe teacher’s salary here are very good, please compare to other countries so we can see.

  5. Cheese Face says:

    Have you tried asking baby jebus to fix the problem?

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  6. Anonymous says:

    Hey, to be fair, compared to my department’s absolutely horrible performance when I was minister before the pandemic, these results are only slightly more terrible.

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  7. Anonymous says:

    Juliana O’Connor-Connolly-Conner: “The world is 6,000 years old, climate change isn’t real, evolution is a satanic hoax, demons are everywhere, and God is going to destroy everything within a few years.”

    Cayman Government: “Let’s put her in charge of educating our children.”

    #lame

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  8. Anonymous says:

    So basically because some other countries in the world have poor quality education and students there are not achieving the expected maths standards there is nothing to see here? Such a ridiculous argument and total lack of pride for a country that is one of the richest in the world and supposed a world leading financial center with a supposedly “world class” civil service.

    Second, juju has been Minister of education for years before the pandemic when students were failing as well. What is her excuse for the pre pandemic times?

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  9. Anonymous says:

    Birth control and sex education are the answers.

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  10. Anonymous says:

    Sure it’s not the exorcisms?

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  11. Anonymous says:

    Education has been failing for the last 17 years I’ve been on island. Don’t blame the pandemic. I blame the parents and the students.

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  12. Anonymous says:

    All parents in Cayman. Good or poor.
    Upright educated Christians or those using ganja, wine, coke or pills to coke, are being excluded, victimized when the try to help their children and help the system.
    They are maligned and blamed after kids fail, without good reason.
    Give me the $5,000/month/child you spent on education (it’s this or more when you add in the Ministry staff salaries and operating costs);
    and I will educate any boy or girl; or get the so lacking Special Needs help for the many others who are thrown into the system to sink and be abused.

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  13. Anonymous says:

    Ummm, private schools had to face the pandemic too. Just sayin.

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  14. Anonymous says:

    Give parents $1500 monthly vouchers and let us choose where we want our children to attend school.

    This would save our country tens of millions annually and better prepare our children for the future.

    Power to the people.

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  15. Anonymous says:

    This is our best and brightest….wow

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  16. Anonymous says:

    So to what does she attribute her failure as Education Minister????????

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  17. Anonymous says:

    Ignoring the obvious fact that results were equally terrible before the pandemic perhaps the Minister can explain why her schools fall so catastrophically far behind other local schools?

    https://www.cayprep.edu.ky/academic/high-school/exam-results/

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  18. Anonymous says:

    There will be no improvement in the next two years. Following the rapture which is then promised, it will take at least a further ten to right the ship(assuming it manages to avoid the iceberg until then).

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  19. Anonymous says:

    I hold this lady personally responsible for upsetting my child with her mandatory devotion in school.
    What freedom of religion ? Not all athiest parents can afford the better private schools and are stuck with with this disgusting system.
    Caymans public education system is nothing more than a sunday school.

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  20. Elvis says:

    More excuses lol

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  21. Anonymous says:

    Where are these other international results she speaks of? you know, so we can do the maths.

    I bet it doesn’t hold up to too much scrutiny.

    As for the system failing our kids…not really, the kids who want to succeed still do. It’s the vast swathes in the middle and below who struggle, because their parents struggled, and many of these households see school as free childcare.

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    • Anonymous says:

      Did she really say 3 years in elementary and six years in secondary?? By that time the elementary students are half way through their primary schooling and the secondary students are actually in 6 form. I do not mean to say she is making it up but something is terrible wrong with that statement. Tell us you made a mistake madam Minister of education..

    • Anonymous says:

      Yes the system is clearly failing the majority of kids; over half of them are functionally innumerate. These are really, really easy exams. Full and huge credit to those kids who still do well out of our public school system.

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  22. Anonymous says:

    Reducing number of kids in Public schools might make the situation more managable. Stop bringing in Teachers and other Civil Servants with kids. Go to any one of our schools and the Jamaican kids outnumber all others.

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    • Anonymous says:

      Are there the local teachers on Island that could improve the current standards ? It’s a nice idea but if local teachers are the same standard as politicians and civil servants can’t see standards improving any time soon sadly.

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    • Anonymous says:

      My issue is that teachers should learn our folk songs and teach them to our kids and not just Jamaican songs and dialect. I went to a function a few months ago and all the songs were Jamaican songs, one in particular about eating chicken foot. That is certainly not part of our culture. On the other hand our Caymanian young adults need to be encouraged to take up teaching training again. I realise that back in the day our teachers were discouraged from teaching jobs because the imported teachers were making so much more than the locals. The local teachers were not getting the housing allowances and the gratiities that the contracted teachers were given. Therefore the banking and other business jobs were more attractive. A much more modern education ministry and department should be able to address that anomaly if it still exist

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      • Anonymous says:

        I would be a little more concerned about my child not being able to read or write properly than what songs they are singing.

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      • Anonymous says:

        Singing songs… THAT is your complaint and priority. We are doomed.

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      • Anonymous says:

        6:44, could you name some of the Caymanian folk songs you are referring to and which you would like our kids to learn?

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    • Anonymous says:

      How? As an expat my kids are not allowed to go to public school, the rules are very clear. No offense but not that I would want them to given the standards. How come there are so many Jamaican kids in the public school system?

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  23. Anonymous says:

    What a sorry, incompetent person to be minister of Education.

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  24. Anonymous says:

    This island needs financial services, and a job in financial services usually needs maths!

    Imagine how many work permits we could do away with if we had better candidates coming through the school system!

    *full disclosure- I am a work permit holder in financial services and I wish that more local school kids had the necessary grounding in school to pursue a career in this field!

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    • Anonymous says:

      The problem is it takes work and dedication to get a real degree and too many of our children aren’t prepared to make the sacrifices in their lives that are required to be successful. Their parents should be ashamed of themselves for raising these lazy, arrogant little monsters.

    • Anonymous says:

      We can’t do away with work permits, we need the fees to balance our bloated expenditures.

  25. Anonymous says:

    People blame “the pandemic” for so many things; the economy, or failed businesses or the very negative implications for so many youngsters’ educations. It was not the pandemic. What you should blame is the “response to the pandemic”. The hysteria was always going to have consequences that will last years.

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  26. Disgusting, uncaring ineptitude!! says:

    Enough is enough! Scrap the entire public school system and instead subsidize Caymanian families to send their kids to the private schools. That is the ONLY way to fix this! This is now GENERATIONS of Caymanians being failed by our GROSSLY INEPT public school system.

    I’ve said it before and I’ll say it here again; the Auditor General’s reports CONFIRM that taxpayers are spending just as much to educate kids in public schools as it would cost to educate them in private schools!! So why aren’t the results the same??? Caymanians, where is the outrage???

    JULIANA, YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF OUR COUNTRY AND OUR SOCIETY. How can you sleep at night?

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    • Anonymous says:

      The Lord works in mysterious ways.

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    • Anonymous says:

      CIG is NOT “spending just as much”. The AG’s report says and I quote “The average cost per student in public schools was 66% higher than the average cost per student in private schools.”!!!

      Unfortunately the private schools are already completely full with multi year waiting lists.

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      • BB says:

        It will be MUCH higher than that now with all the extra teachers hired… free lunch…. free laptops!

  27. Anonymous says:

    $10 grand a month or the results will continue to suffer.

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  28. Anonymous says:

    And what was the excuse before the pandemic? What a load of BS. Sick of this Govt.

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  29. Anonymous says:

    “Overall, student attainment in math was not ideal,” Not ideal? I wonder at what shocking level of illiteracy and innumeracy the minister would admit her ministry had totally failed at least one generation of school leavers.

    The excuse that the results were no worse than 2019, which were also utterly embarrassing is a bad joke. Global results? Why not compare them a little closer to home to CIS, Prep etc… who these kids are going to be competing for jobs with.

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  30. Anonymous says:

    JuJu, face it paving Brac roads was your high point. Overall educational standards in Cayman have taken a turn for the worse with you at the helm. Allowing religious radicals into the classroom isn’t good for education either. You need to take early retirement, like now!

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  31. Anonymous says:

    Get the administration out of the way of the teachers. Let the teachers do what they do best – teach.

    Instead teachers are required to document until they are exhausted just so the administrative quants can try to use the data to come up with something groundbreaking and that fits their narrative.

    Also, way too much time spent requiring ridiculous amounts of child protection training when the courts give convicted pedophiles slaps on the wrist.

    The less educational bureaucracy involved in education, the better.

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    • Anonymous says:

      This is SO true in my kids’ school on Cayman Brac. I see teachers overwhelmed with bureaucratic bs while the kids lose valuable teaching time to data data data.

  32. Anonymous says:

    What a copout to blame failing grade on the pandemic. it’s the Education minister ‘s cowardly and fearful response to the Covid-19 challenge that is causing the mental health crisis and slipping grades amongst our Caymanian students.

    It is time to rid ourselves of her ignorant and failed leadership and empower qualified and professional younger Caymanians to set into positions of leadership in this country.

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    • Anonymous says:

      Exactly! The results were equally terrible before the pandemic when she was education minister for the previous government.

  33. Anonymous says:

    LOL 😆…..oh my aching sides. It started long before the pandemic. But any excuse to deflect from the obvious fact that these results have been happening on YOUR watch for years. Happy to wallow in your own denial.

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    • Anonymous says:

      So why didn’t the private school students suffer the same pandemic problems.
      Look at their teachers, curriculum standards, and codes of behavior….you might just get off your Christian high horse and learn something.
      And another thing, ditch that Ridiculous hat.

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  34. Squealer says:

    Ever since the financial services economy began and jobs became readily available at home, Cayman has relied on economic growth and corresponding job creation as a substitute for providing effective education and training for students. That model is no longer viable.

    The small percentage of students with the ability to pursue university education will always be fine in most economies. However, it is now vital that Cayman establishes an effective trades and vocational training system so that the bulk of school leavers can transition into the workplace without difficulty. This is not hard and has been ignored for too long.

    The alternatives are increased unemployment and an ever growing civil service as a repository for the unemployable.

    If Cayman wants to be world class, it is time to get value for money from these billion dollar annual budgets.

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  35. Anonymous says:

    of course…when was the last time a civil servant took responsibility for anything???

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  36. Anonymous says:

    Blame yourself Minister for not overhauling a failed educations system.

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  37. Anonymous says:

    To have this lady continue to head Education in this island is an absolute tragedy to the future generation. How much more failure can we accept? Please note the frustration extends further than the minister, the lackluster performance of the Ministry and Education Department should not be ignored either. Sad times all around

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  38. Anonymous says:

    Every single pathetic Government failure is blamed on covid pandemic!! Why not Hurricane Ivan, Madam Education Minister??

    Please acknowledged that our public education system has been failing, under your own ‘leadership’, for years!!

    You, Mrs. O’Connor-Conolly, are a miserable failure as Education Minister. That’s the real problem!!!

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