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School Standards & Inspections

An overview of the Office of Education Standards and the results from their private and government school reports

Joanna boxall
By Joanna Boxall
Last updated 20 July, 2026

In the Cayman Islands, the Education Law (2024 Revision) requires that all government and private schools, as well as other registered educational facilities, undergo regular inspections conducted by the Office of Education Standards (OES). This is an independent division within the Cayman Islands Government. For more information on what OES does, and the reports they produce, continue reading.

On This Page

For example inspections are conducted in a) all preschools and those caring for young children, b) all private and government primary and secondary government schools, including the Cayman Islands Further Education Centre (CIFEC) and the Lighthouse School and c) all post-secondary education providers including those offering A-Levels, the IB and those offering the US High School Diploma and SATs.

The Process & Scoring Criteria

Inspectors evaluate each school and assign one of four overall judgments: Excellent, Good, Satisfactory or Weak. Excellent means the school has exceptionally high quality of performance and practice. Good is the expected level for every school in the Cayman Islands regardless of whether it is a public or a private school. Satisfactory is the minimum level of quality required in the Cayman Islands. All schools should meet or exceed this level of performance and practice. Weak means that the quality of the teaching and other factors is not acceptable, and urgent measures need to be undertaken to improve the quality of the performance and practice in this school or facility.

Interim School Audits
The Office of Education Standards introduced interim school audits, a risk‑based approach to school inspections, in October 2024. Under this model, schools and early years settings that have received two consecutive judgments of ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ are classified as low risk and are removed from the regular two‑year inspection cycle. This allows them to focus more on educational innovation, professional development, and other initiatives that further enhance their performance. These low‑risk schools instead undergo interim school audits which are less intensive than full inspections and are designed to provide a “health‑check” to ensure that standards are being maintained.

Monitoring Visits
In October, 2025, the Office of Education Standards introduced monitoring visits as a proactive measure to ensure that all schools are supported and held accountable for maintaining and improving educational standards. Monitoring visits have two key purposes: to strengthen the quality of provision in schools judged as satisfactory where aspects of improvement are required, and to provide early assurance and guidance to newly established schools that have not yet reached the stage for a full inspection. Monitoring visits are focused on open professional dialogue and are developmental and supportive in nature. No report is published at the end of a monitoring visit. Instead, the lead inspector provides school leaders with a letter summarising what is working well and outlining the next steps required to strengthen practice and increase impact.

Schools

Elevating the Standards of Cayman's Schools

Catchment Areas

The School System

This page was last updated on July 20th 2026, and has all the up to date school inspection reports that have been published up to that date for the Cayman Islands. The results are gradually improving in most areas; the majority of schools in the Cayman Islands have been inspected and found to be 'Satisfactory' and a smaller portion, 'Good'. A small handful are now 'Excellent' There has been a decrease in the number of schools that were regarded 'Weak'. However, there still remains a large majority of Caymanian students in satisfactory schools and one has to wonder if this is a problem that both parents and the schools should be trying to tackle? If parents were more invested in their children's education, and showed their children that they valued their children's education, then one has to hope that standards and results would continue to improve.

The last annual statistical analysis report from the Office of Education Standards for 2025 can be viewed here. It gives an overview of how the schools were graded in that year. The last National Schools Progress Report was also published in 2023. Please see here. It is an incredibly detailed and interesting report, and it covers all school inspections between 2018 and 2022 highlighting improvements and areas for further development. We have emailed the OES office and asked when the next reports will be published.

It is good news is that these inspection reports have resulted in a response from the Ministry of Education and changes to the Government primary schools’ curriculum have been made. The Cayman Compass newspaper reported in early October 2019 that a group of officials took two trips to England to observe and gather information on the curriculum being used there. That curriculum is being used as a model for Cayman. In April 2019 the then Minister of Education detailed some of the anticipated changes that are now underway:

  • Children are to have mastered their times tables by the age of 9
  • More emphasis will be placed on spelling, grammar and handwriting
  • Children will learn to write computer code
  • In science there will be a shift towards hard facts and scientific knowledge
  • A mandatory second language, Spanish, will be introduced in Key Stage 2,
  • In Social Studies children will be taught about Cayman’s history and culture
  • Children will be expected to learn more at an earlier age

With this new round of inspection reports we can see the changes that have been implemented, which is raising our school to a higher standard of education.

Cayman Islands School Inspection Reports 2017-2026

Excellent Overall Result

Good Overall Result

Satisfactory Overall Result

Weak Overall Result

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