Analysis of education data report

By Staff Reporter

In this latest series of Cayman Conversations, Ralph Lewis spoke with Mark Ray, Director for the Department of Education Services, and Wingrove Hunte, senior manager of data and testing for the Department of Education Services, about the ways in which they are hoping to improve the learning of the core subjects of maths and English in government schools across Cayman, further to the recently released Education Data Report. The report indicated that at the end of the 2022/2023 academic year, 26% of students had achieved the expected standard in reading, writing and maths upon leaving primary school, down 1% from the 2021/2022 academic year.

Mr Ray said the report looked at different metrics, including enrolments and attendance as well as attainment data.

“They don’t just look at the data, they look at trends over time in those key metrics – not just on what the students are achieving, but what progress has been made, over many years. Some information such as enrolment is also obtained from private schools so they can paint as comprehensive a picture as possible,” he explained.

On the positive side, Mr Hunte said the trend seemed to be that enrolment was increasing over time in the early years institutions, even though it is not compulsory education. Early years education was controlled largely by the private sector, he said. In addition, attendance was up. While the effects of the covid pandemic were lingering and still “giving some trouble” with respect to attendance, they were seeing the trend stabilise.

“We are now operating on about 90% of attendance, so that is relatively stable over the last 2-3 years,” Mr Hunte said, adding that they were seeing “tremendous increases” in attainment at the secondary level, at the end of KS4 years 11 and 12 combined.

“Student attainment is improving significantly over time,” he added.

Mr Ray said when they looked at the student’s attainment all the way through their school life, they were seeing “significant value added” in the public education system.

“When we look at those predictors compared to what they are actually achieving, we are seeing in some instances as much as close to 2 grade points higher than what was predicted,” he explained.

Mr Ray said KS2 students were just about on par with all the usual metrics (grammar, punctuation, spelling, reading, writing, maths) compared to the previous academic year, with about 59% of the cohort achieving the expected standard this year in spelling grammar and punctuation, versus 58% the year before. When it came to reading, 43% were achieving the expected levels compared to 42% the previous year. With regard to writing, this had remained stable at 46%, but maths was down 1% on the previous year’s 42% at 41%.

“When we speak of the attainment and the progress in these instances, we recognise that there is significant work we need to do in a number of key areas at KS2,” he acknowledged.

Mr Ray talked about the ongoing strategies that were in place with their KS2 English and maths curriculum, brought about by subject specialists working within the schools.

“I’m very eager to see what the academic year 2023/2024 brings with regard to those results at KS2,” he furthered.

At the KS4 level, they had seen “significant improvement” in external exams. Where they had seen 66.1% of students receiving a pass at level 2 in English in 2022, that had risen to 79.8% in 2023.

“That’s a significant achievement and we are very pleased in term of the progress in English,” he stated.

Maths was a different story, however, with only 39.7% achieving a level 2 pass versus 52.3% in 2023.

(For context, a level 2 pass at CXC is the equivalent to a B/6 grade at GCSE.)

“While we are not where we want to be, we recognise the improvement of our students over time,” Mr Ray said.

Science had maintained a “steady, solid” performance at 66.3% in 2022 and 67.3% in 2023.

The other metric they measure is the expected standard, i.e. the number of students who have achieved five or more level 2 passes at CXC including maths and English. In 2022 that was 37.5%, rising to 48.5% in 2023.

“We’re seeing increases as we are on this upward trajectory in terms of the improvement in those key stages,” he said.

Mr Hunte said they were seeing some stability in the results, particularly at the KS2 level, where they are using a new assessment tool from the UK which required significantly more rigour attached to it.

Mr Ray said in particular they were working to develop how mathematics and critical thinking were delivered to students. Critical thinking impacted across all the subject matters, Mr Ray said. Professional development opportunities were being offered to teachers and a number of other programmes linked to assessments so they could ensure that quality first teaching was at the forefront.

“If we’re talking about what has the greatest impact on student attainment, we know that good quality teaching is the key thing,” Mr Ray said.

Intervention work to ensure students were given more targeted teaching and additional support was being given to teachers. Summer school was an excellent intervention for those needing more maths and English help and to ensure less learning loss over the summer break.

Support from parents was key, Mr Ray acknowledged and admitted that they had “a relatively variable level of support from parents” with “pockets of invested parents”.

“We do encourage parents as much as possible to engage with the students, engage with the teachers,” he confirmed and spoke about students leading some of the parents’ evenings to show the parents what they were learning.

“We want as much parent interaction as possible,” he said.

Mr Ray talked about the importance of having “thematic experiential teaching and learning opportunities for young people when it came to studying English.

“It comes back to the authenticity of learning and teaching,” he stated, explaining how English and maths would be woven into all subjects.

“We want to make sure that students are exposed to this as early as possible, so we are trying to combat the need for time in delivering these important core curriculum areas with the integration of those areas into all subjects, so that every teacher is a teacher of English, every teacher is a teacher of maths,” Mr Ray explained.

Quality teaching of core subjects was their focus with an emphasis on moderations of assessments and lesson delivery as an important aspect to ensure what was being delivered was done so with fidelity. Teachers were also being trained to understand general standards when it came to written pieces.

Internal and external moderating exercises helped in this respect, he said.

Mr Hunte said the new curriculum meant a new approach to assessment in that they were looking at individual assessments of each child, looking at whether they had reached the expected standard and what gaps needed to be filled. In addition, better communications between primary and secondary schools was a critical element driving success.

“Moving to year 10, we should see tremendous gains,” he said optimistically.