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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 24 March, 2020

In the Cayman Islands there is a law which states that all government and private schools, as well as education facilities, must be inspected regularly 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 give it a result of Excellent, Good, Satisfactory and 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. Only one school has ever been awarded an ‘Excellent’ result.

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The School System

The vast majority of schools which have been inspected to date have a ‘Satisfactory’ or a ‘Weak’ overall rating. Please note that inspection reports of many of Cayman’s private primary and high schools have not yet been undertaken. This page was last updated on February 12th 2019. We will add the new reports as they come in.

Key Facts Regarding the Overall Performance of Schools in 2018-19 School Year Following Completion of the First 25 Inspections

  1. Only around one quarter of all schools inspected to date are performing at the ‘expected’ level (good or better).
  2. Almost all of the institutions performing at the expected level are private schools or privately operated early years centres.
  3. Only around one quarter of Cayman Islands students are attending good or excellent schools.
  4. Montessori curriculum schools feature prominently amongst the group of higher performing private schools.
  5. There is currently only one public school performing at the expected level (‘good’ or better) and that is The Lighthouse School.
  6. Around half of the private schools inspected so far are performing at the expected level.
  7. The fees for the private schools and EYC’s performing at the expected level (‘good’ or better) are all in the ‘middle’ to ‘high’ fee bracket.
  8. Most public schools are performing at the minimum level of quality for the Cayman Islands (‘satisfactory’) and this constitutes some improvement since the last full round of inspections conducted in 2014-15, when most public schools were judged to be performing at an ‘unsatisfactory’ level.

The Key Areas Identified To Improve Standards Include:

  1. Teachers’ planning should include clear learning objectives which are achievable in the time available and which are closely aligned to the overall curriculum guidance for each stage and age. Teachers in their planning and also in the actual delivery of the lesson must be able to adapt lessons with flexibility and they must have evidently different outcomes in mind for those students who are working above grade standard.
  2. Across all stages of education in Cayman, teachers’ low expectations of students remain a fundamental barrier and too often restrict the pace of students’ progress.
  3. Tasks prepared for students should provide sufficient challenge and the content of lessons must be well matched to the levels of demonstrated achievement evident from assessment data available to teachers.
  4. Wherever possible, teachers should incorporate meaningful and purposeful contexts for learning within their programme. Students’ engagement in learning will be enhanced when activities have real-life relevance and application.
  5. In early years centres, lengthy whole group activities, tasks that lack purpose and extensive teacher-talk restricts the engagement and practical learning opportunities for children. Play activities are central to the learning programme to be offered in such contexts but, as necessary, such provision will need to be enhanced with timely intervention and direction by adults to support specific learning objectives. The daily programme in early years classes needs to include sufficient practical learning time as well as appropriate time for breaks, snacks and rest.
  6. Inspectors found that performance management arrangements of staff at times lack rigour and do not have sufficient impact upon the actual quality of teaching over time. As well as unannounced lesson observations, school leaders should undertake regular meetings with teachers to check the progress made by students. The rubric used by schools to evaluate teaching should be aligned to the ‘Successful Schools and Achieving Students’ framework and measurable targets should be set for each teacher on a regular basis to support ongoing improvement in teachers’ performance.

For the Office of Education Standards 2019 Annual Report please see here. It is an incredibly detailed and insightful report and will give anyone who is truly interested in the current state of education in the Cayman Islands a very clear, honest and concise look at the situation. The good news is that these inspection reports have elicited a response from the Ministry of Education and changes to the Government primary schools’ curriculum are underway. 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 Education Minister Juliana O’Connor-Connolly detailed some of the anticipated changes:

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

Cayman Islands School Inspection Reports 2017-2020

Excellent Overall Result

Good Overall Result

Satisfactory Overall Result

Weak Overall Result

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