A major planned shift in how Barbados assigns students to secondary schools has been delayed, drawing widespread approval from the island’s secondary teachers’ union and an advocacy group of concerned parents. The change at the center of the debate is the transition from the long-standing traditional one-off 11-plus examination to a continuous assessment model, which evaluates students through a range of in-class activities rather than a single high-stakes test.
During an official ministerial address delivered Friday, Minister of Education Transformation Chad Blackman confirmed that while the use of continuous assessment as the sole determining factor for secondary school placement will be postponed, the core framework of the model will still be integrated into primary school teaching and learning for the 2024-2025 academic year.
Mary-Anne Redman, president of the Barbados Secondary Teachers’ Union (BSTU), says the union fully backs the postponement, even as it remains committed to continuous assessment as the future of primary-to-secondary transition evaluation. Unlike the traditional high-stakes exam, Redman explained, continuous assessment incorporates a diverse set of evaluation tools including oral presentations, structured student portfolios, reflective writing assignments, and collaborative group projects. This approach, she argued, creates space for students to demonstrate the full breadth of their creative and developmental learning journey, rather than only measuring their performance on a single high-pressure test day.
The BSTU leader noted that the traditional examination model fulfilled a necessary role in Barbados’ education history, but has outlived its relevance in the 21st century. “It’s our belief that that type of exam has served its purpose historically, and it no longer has any place in our 21st-century society and one that has had universal access to secondary education for decades now,” Redman said.
She emphasized that the delay will give education authorities critical extra time to properly upskill the primary school teaching workforce ahead of full implementation. The extra window will enable more comprehensive, widespread training for a broader cohort of teachers, rather than rushing preparation that would pull too many educators out of their classrooms at once. This approach, Redman argued, will ensure training is more strategic, reaches more educators, and avoids disrupting daily learning for students.
Beyond pre-service training for teachers currently working with upper primary classes, Redman called for training to be extended to all primary school educators. Given regular teacher rotation across grade levels, she explained, no teacher stays assigned to Classes 3 and 4 – the final two years of primary school that feed into secondary placement – permanently. To avoid putting students at a disadvantage due to un-trained staff in future years, all primary educators need to build proficiency in continuous assessment practices, she said. The extra time granted by the delay will also allow the Ministry of Education to deploy all necessary infrastructure and resources to support both students and teachers through the transition, Redman added.
Paula-Ann Moore, spokesperson and coordinator for the Group of Concerned Parents of Barbados, also welcomed the ministry’s decision, and highlighted what she called a landmark win for parent engagement in national education reform. Moore noted that nearly 400 Barbadian parents have already signed a petition calling for a slower, more consultative rollout of the assessment change, crediting growing collective advocacy for prompting the ministry’s reconsideration.
“A hallmark of a modern democracy is that regular citizens feel empowered to advocate constructively for the best interests of their family and to hold our leaders to account…it is wonderful to see other parents also having the courage to come forward in greater numbers, including last week, to represent their children’s best interests,” Moore said.
Moore commended Blackman and his ministerial team for adjusting the timeline of the 11-plus replacement, and expressed the group’s desire to maintain ongoing collaborative partnership with the ministry and other education stakeholders to resolve remaining concerns and develop a full transformation plan with clear accountability metrics.
She stressed that such a sweeping overhaul of the national education system must align with established best practices for educational change management. This includes centering parents as core stakeholders and co-designers of the reform, allocating adequate time and resources for rollout, maintaining consistent two-way communication between authorities and families, and rolling out the change in carefully phased stages.
Building and maintaining parent trust in the new process is non-negotiable, Moore added: once public confidence is lost, it is extremely difficult to recover, so rushed implementation is not an option. Trust can only be cultivated over time, through full transparency and clear, detailed information about how the new system will work.
Moore warned against cutting corners on the reform, noting that education transformation is too critical to both Barbadian families and the country’s long-term national development to implement incorrectly. “We have one chance to get it right. Too much is at stake,” she said, adding that the group is particularly concerned that a rushed rollout could accidentally widen socioeconomic achievement gaps between the nation’s most and least advantaged students.