Barbados Education Transformation: Two-Stage Secondary School Structure to be Implemented in 2025, Says Chief Education Officer

There will be a two-stage secondary school structure at the start of the 2025 academic school year.

This was disclosed by Chief Education Officer Dr Ramona Archer-Bradshaw last Thursday during the launch of the Education Transformation proposals at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre.

Archer Bradshaw said: “What we are also proposing (apart from the introduction of the Barbados National Secondary Diploma and competency-based options) is a two tiered structure where we have a Junior College of Excellence (JCE) and the Senior College of Excellences (SCE).”

Director of Education Reform, Dr Idamay Denny added: “The Junior College of Excellence is going to be equivalent to what is now the lower school of the secondary school system. It will typically have children between the ages of 12- to 14-years old but we recognised that we have not been doing well at providing for our gifted children. If we recognise that they are gifted children in the feeder system who can move to the JCE before age 12 then we will do so.”

She continued: “We are updating the core curriculum as was said earlier by the Chief Education Officer and financial literacy is one of the things we are exposing the children to. Digital literacy is another area that will be included. The World Economic Forum talked about the fact that all of the jobs in the future are going to be led by technology so therefore we have to teach our children digital literacy.

“We are also going to have a wide range of subject areas that the children will be exposed to because one of things that has to happen is that the children have to interact with things in order to find out what they like and what they do well.”

It was also announced that at the end of the children’s time at the JCE, they would be assessed and given a certification which would mark their completion of the first three years of secondary education in Barbados.

The SCE will normally contain students from ages 15 to 18 years old for the last four years of secondary education but the system is flexible to facilitate students who are demonstrably capable (academically and maturity wise) of stepping up prior to reaching 15 years old.

Speaking about the features of the proposed SCEs, Denny said: “These Senior Colleges of Excellence will have specialist programming which is linked to national development priorities. We have listened and looked at a number of speeches made relative to economic development around the country and we have identified a number of areas earmarked as essential for the future. Things like Food Science & Agriculture, Information Technology and Robotics, Sports and the Arts.”