In a significant shift to Barbados’ education reform agenda, Minister of Education Transformation Chad Blackman has announced a multi-year delay to the planned rollout of continuous assessment for secondary school placement, responding to widespread concerns raised by parents, teachers and education stakeholders.
The policy change was originally designed to phase out the decades-old Common Entrance Examination (also known as the 11-Plus), a high-stakes, single-sitting test that has long determined secondary school placement for Barbadian students. When first unveiled earlier this year, the government planned to make the cohort of students entering Class Three this academic year the first group to transition to the new model, which would have replaced the one-shot exam with a two-year continuous assessment framework built into primary schooling.
But that original timeline hit a major roadblock after more than 400 parents and guardians signed a formal petition calling for a more gradual, phased implementation. The parent group argued that starting the new assessment model with incoming Class Three students would leave educators, schools and the ministry itself without enough time to update curricula, deliver required teacher training, refine operational processes and put necessary support systems in place before assessment results carried high stakes for secondary placement. Instead, the petitioners urged the government to launch the new framework with students entering Class One, giving all parties sufficient preparation time.
In a formal ministerial statement released Friday, Blackman confirmed the ministry had heeded those calls and reset the transition timeline. While continuous assessment practices will be integrated into primary school teaching starting this academic year, the results will not be used to determine secondary school placement for the foreseeable future. The new placement model will not launch until the 2026 academic year at the earliest, when continuous assessment will first be embedded into primary-level learning as a tool to track student progress, identify learning gaps early, deliver targeted support, and build individual learning profiles that follow students through their educational journey.
Under the revised pathway, the first cohort to move to secondary school via the new continuous assessment model will be students entering Class Two this September, but only if all pre-implementation conditions are fully met by 2029–2030, when that cohort would transition to secondary school. This adjusted timeline gives that group three full years of preparation under the new curriculum framework. Students entering Class One this year will get four years of preparation, while students entering Infants B and Infants A will get five and six years of preparation respectively, ensuring no cohort enters the new model without adequate time to adapt.
Blackman outlined a clear set of non-negotiable requirements that must be satisfied before the new model goes live for placement purposes. These include comprehensive, ongoing training and professional support for all teachers, clear, consistent and widely understood assessment standards across all primary schools, robust moderation processes to guarantee fairness and consistency in grading, reliable data and information systems to manage assessment records, fully operational quality assurance mechanisms, and sufficient capacity and resources for all schools to implement the new approach successfully. Blackman also emphasized that the ministry will maintain transparent, timely communication with parents, teachers and stakeholders throughout the transition, and will only launch the model once it can prove the new system is fair, equitable and does not disadvantage any student or demographic group.
For current students further along in their primary education, the existing system will remain in place. Students entering Class Four this September, who are scheduled to sit the Barbados Secondary School Entrance Examination (BSSEE) in May 2027, will still have their secondary placement determined by the traditional Common Entrance Exam. Blackman added that the government will also strengthen the existing placement system during the transition period to make it fairer and more inclusive, continuing to allocate secondary school places based on established criteria of academic performance and residential location to provide certainty, consistency and fairness for families.
Beyond placement reform, the government is also working to upgrade overall secondary education quality across the country. Blackman reaffirmed the government’s commitment to ensuring every secondary school is a center of educational excellence, where all students receive the challenge, support and inspiration needed to reach their full potential.
Longer-term plans for national assessment will also expand the scope of standardized testing beyond the current focus on English and Mathematics. Over time, science, Social Studies and citizenship will be added to the national assessment framework, creating a broader evaluation that captures the full range of knowledge, skills and competencies that primary school students are expected to develop. Blackman noted that continuous assessment data will play a key role in this expanded system, helping teachers and schools identify and address student learning needs early before gaps widen and impact long-term progress.