Students prepare to sit Cambridge exams

Statement by Education Minister Nalton Brangman: 

I have invited you here today to provide information on the Cambridge International Curriculum and the Cambridge examinations which our students will be sitting in April and May.

Cambridge International Examinations (CIE) is the world’s largest provider of international education programmes and qualifications for 5–19 year olds.

The Cambridge Curriculum provides globally recognised qualifications including Cambridge IGCSE, Cambridge O Level, Cambridge International AS and A Level and Cambridge Pre-University.

More than 9000 schools offer Cambridge programmes and qualifications in 160 countries across 6 regions: the Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, and Southern Africa.

Bermuda however, is the only jurisdiction where the entire public school system utilises the Cambridge curriculum and is therefore the only country that requires all of its students to sit such exams. The content of the Cambridge curriculum is tailored to a global student body of rich diversity.

The key reasons for implementing the Cambridge Curriculum into the public education system are to:

• Create global citizens of tomorrow, part of our mission and commitment to deliver a world-class international education; and

• Adopt internationally benchmarked qualifications.

Recommendation 9 of the ‘Review of Public Education Report’ led by Dr. David Hopkins in May 2007 proposed that we, “Align the curriculum both vertically and horizontally to ensure adequate progression between grades and phases of education.”

The previous Government saw the need for the Bermuda Public School System (BPSS) to use a “demanding coherent curriculum that is linked between schools and groups of schools”. This was the correct decision for our school system.

Through the adoption of the Cambridge International Curriculum (CIE) for English, Mathematics and Science, we are now linked not just between but also with international schools in 160 other countries.

The CIE raises standards and expectations.  The content of the curriculum demands higher order thinking skills.  It provides unambiguous benchmark standards at the end of each stage of education, P6, M3 and S2, which was strongly suggested by the authors of the Hopkins report. 

There is now a clear match between standards, curriculum and assessment.

The feedback reports that are generated from the examinations given in P6 and M3 allow our schools to:

• Tailor individual learners’ learning programs

• Provide information for reporting to parents

• Compare the performance of all learners taking tests in that session

• Manage learning programs as learners move between schools

The test feedback we receive also measures a learners’ performance against a number of variables including how a learner performed in relation to:

• the curriculum framework

• their teaching group

• a whole school cohort

• previous years’ learners

Last year, 2012, was the first year for these tests and the first benchmark set for the public school system.

This year, our Middle School 3 students will be sitting their examinations on the mornings of April 16th – 18th.

The Primary 6 students will sit theirs on the mornings of April 23rd to 25th.

At the senior school level, our students sit the International General Certificate of Secondary Education Examinations (IGCSE). The IGCSE is the most popular international qualification for 14 to 16 year olds.  It is a GCSE examination for international use.  These qualifications are taken after the S2 year and over 170,000 students sit this examination each year. 

They are the key to admission for all of the world’s major English speaking universities.

Our senior school students will be sitting these examinations in May.

Bermudian students will sit these examinations at the same time as their counterparts in other jurisdictions. As a result, CIE places stringent requirements on each locale to ensure the security of the examinations and the examination process.

It is not unusual for CIE to make unannounced inspections to ensure the rigour of our process and we also place local observers in examination rooms to oversee the process.

I am pleased to report that our Ministry staff did extremely well in the first year of administration of the CIE during 2012. They met or exceeded all the relevant conditions of handling, disseminating and returning the CIE examinations to Cambridge.

While our teachers have had the bulk of the responsibility in preparing our children for these examinations, I wish to invite parents to assist their child by doing the following:

• Ensure your child gets a good night’s rest prior to the test date.

• Make sure your child has a healthy breakfast and gets to school on time - all exams start at 9:00 a.m.

• Pack a healthy snack such as fruit since the tests are divided into sessions and children usually have a break between them.

• Ensure that they have black or blue pens only and pencils, etc.

• You cannot text your child during the exams.  Schools have procedures for holding all such devices during the exam period. 

• Talk with your child and encourage them to try their best and help them adopt a positive attitude.

• Remind your child to listen carefully and follow directions

• When they come home on testing days compliment him or her for trying hard.  Use phrases such as don’t give up or do your best to help increase confidence.

• Keep in mind that this is only one way of knowing how your child is achieving in school.  We can all learn from these tests and expect to see improvement in subsequent years.

Since we are a comprehensive school system, there are some students who do not take these exams.  5% of our primary and middle school students are exempted from sitting the examinations due to their particular individual education plan.

We also have students who are entitled to accommodations or access arrangements as they are called by CIE. These accommodations might mean that a student will have a scribe to write their answers for them or that they receive the questions verbally since they may have a visual disability.

On the other side of the spectrum, we will also have middle school and senior school students who are being accelerated through the IGCSE programme in either Math or English or both. These are our gifted and high academic achieving students.

It might also be recalled that we previously had middle school students who took the IGCSE, these students will be taking the AS level in S2 and will be aiming for Cambridge A levels in S4.  

In order to prepare for these examinations, they attend school on Saturdays and during the school break.  

We will be carefully assessing the progress our students are making as they sit these international examinations. While these examinations are not the entire school curriculum, they are an important benchmark of how our students are performing in the core subjects (English, maths and science) against their similar aged counterparts.

I wish to offer my best wishes to our students as they make their final preparations for these exams.

I also wish to thank our Principals and Teachers for their work to prepare the students and wish them the best as they now head into the final days of preparation.

Thank you.