Exam results spanning 13 years are to be analysed by the organisation that sets the assessments after it was revealed that the island’s public school system is lagging its international counterparts.

The Ministry of Education announced that the review would cover the Cambridge Checkpoint and IGCSE marks from 2012 to 2025.

Its update came as a charity leader with expertise in curriculum design emphasised the importance of early literacy in elevating Bermuda’s exam results.

Becky Ausenda is the founder and former executive director of the Bermuda Education Network, which runs curriculum enhancement programmes while working to increase opportunities for public primary school students.

Ms Ausenda said she welcomed the review announcement and hoped it could also cover the first year of primary school.

The education ministry said this afternoon: “As Cambridge reporting structures and methodologies changed throughout the period under review, the analysis will be conducted by the vendor, Cambridge International Education.

“This ensures that all information is presented accurately and within its full technical context.”

A ministry spokeswoman added: “In keeping with the Minister of Education’s priority of improving student outcomes, completing this analysis will ensure that data released to the public is grounded in the appropriate context.

“The analysis will assist the ministry in evaluating the impact of instructional practices and in identifying patterns in students’ achievement levels over time.

“Once the review is complete, projected for early next month, the findings will be shared with stakeholders to ensure everyone remains well informed and engaged in the continuous improvement process.”

She said the ministry will post the analysis on www.moed.bm.

Ms Ausenda spoke to The Royal Gazette after it was revealed that students at all levels taking the Cambridge Checkpoint exams and senior school students taking the IGCSE were scoring well below the international averages for the same qualifications.

She said the Cambridge and IGCSE results were disappointing — and highlighted research showing that early language and literacy experiences significantly influence overall student outcomes.

BEN’s Horizons programme partners with experiential learning organisations in Bermuda to enhance the public education curriculum and improve reading comprehension outcomes, and it runs a summer learning programme for primary 3 and 4 level students.

The Ministry of Education attributed below-average outcomes to the non-selective nature of Bermuda’s public school system, small cohort sizes that can create “statistical volatility” and disruptions caused by Covid.

It also referred to a prolonged period of “leadership turnover and structural reform impacting the consistency of instructional delivery”.

Ms Ausenda agreed these were contributory factors but added that another major factor was that the early reading outcomes in public primary schools needed improvement.

“When students struggle with reading, we also need to consider the early language and literacy experiences they received before entering P1,” she said.

Ms Ausenda referred to research from the Science of Reading — a comprehensive, interdisciplinary body of research about how children most effectively learn to read — that shows strong literacy begins with well -developed foundational skills, particularly phonemic awareness and phonics.

“The more phonemic awareness instruction at an early age, the better,” she said.

“Children build decoding skills necessary to read fluently and comprehend increasingly complex texts.

“Toddlers need to be immersed in language at home and daycare through read-alouds, nursery rhymes, songs and games.

“At primary level, we are involved in ongoing efforts to improve literacy outcomes. Previously, schools relied primarily on the Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Curriculum.

“An important step forward came in 2024 with the introduction of the University of Florida Literacy Institute phonics programme. The goal is to make sure all students have foundational decoding skills mastered and this can be achieved with a 30-minute dose of UFLI each day.”

Ms Ausenda said BEN had hoped that out of the parish primary segment of education reform there would be a nursery and preschool linked to each primary school.

“The potential benefits of more Bright Sparks programming for three-year-olds seems clear but I think there are space constraints in the existing preschools. It would be great if this could be solved.”

The Bright Sparks programme was introduced by the Government in alignment with its Plan 2022 strategy calling for the expansion of preschool spaces to include children aged 3.

Questions have been raised about whether the Cambridge Curriculum is suitable for Bermuda’s public education system. Asked at a public meeting in 2021 if the Cambridge curriculum would be replaced, Diallo Rabain, the former education minister, said that all options were on the table.

Ms Ausenda said that primary schools have been encouraged to use the play-based Creative Curriculum in the first year of primary school over the Cambridge curriculum and questioned whether the move had resulted in improvements.

She added: “A challenge here is that the teachers are being pulled in too many directions. They’re having to try to integrate the Creative Curriculum with the Cambridge International English Language Arts standards.

“Now might be an opportune moment to assess whether to revert to Cambridge in P1 while still promoting play-based elements. This is a concern that is frequently raised and we’d like to encourage more open dialogue around this”

Ms Ausenda said she does not believe there is evidence that there is an inherent problem with the curriculum at primary level.

She explained: “The curriculum should be thought of as three things — the standards or curriculum objectives that teachers have to teach, the resources that are available such as schemes of work and lesson plans to teach them and thirdly the assessments which show us how students are doing.”

Ms Ausenda said it was important, as in other jurisdictions, that teachers got planning time to analyse data from the progression tests.

“The Cambridge International Curriculum provides a solid framework, and the focus now should be on ensuring strong implementation and support for teachers and students.

“The work that other countries do analysing the formative assessments and preparing for the final summative assessments is what gets them better results in the Checkpoint assessments,” she said.

“Making more provisions for that work, will help us to close the gap in terms of international averages.”