Building a learning nation

The Cayman Islands are gaining recognition the world over for building world-class learning spaces which reflect both 21st-Century thinking and the islands’ rich and unique culture. Here you can share in the progress of the most innovative, exciting and highly publicised capital programme for education ever undertaken in the Caribbean. These are the reflections in real time of those who are making it happen and those whose lives will be touched; educators, parents, students, government staff, architects, planners, and providers of the services students will ultimately benefit from. The world is watching this one, so leave your comments, link to the site and get in touch if you want to know more. You can see more on the education transformation process at http://buildingexcellencetogether.blogspot.com.


01 October, 2008

Cayman education gets even more international coverage!

Professor Stephen Heppell talking about the George Hicks Campus during the Annual cefpi Conference
The new Cayman Islands schools designs have featured very highly this week at a major international conference on future school design in San Diego.

The Council of Education Facilities Planners International Conference (cefpi) is the most important conference of its type in the USA and Canada, this year. This year there were close to a thousand delegates from a number of countries, including: The USA, Canada, Australia, U.K, Jordan, Mexico, Singapore, Dubai and Cayman Islands.

The Cayman schools, and part of the education transformation story was referred to a number of times by Key Note Speaker, and consultant to the Cayman Islands; Professor Stephen Heppell. Unusually for a key note speaker, Prof Heppell is staying all three days and will also close the conference with another presentation.

His comments included the references to the definition of the ‘Educated Caymanian’, the ICT link up of the Little Cayman Education Service to a school in the UK and Cayman Brac, the ICT link up of George Hicks students dropping ‘electronically’ into a conference on schools design to students from three schools in the UK and also a reference to the splitting of the large George Hicks High school to the four small schools on the George Hicks Campus.

Interestingly, a very large number of delegates had already heard of the transformation work being undertaken in Cayman and were very eager to hear more. It is very clear, that the designs in the Cayman Islands really do represent a clear vision of how school designs will reflect the future learning needs of students. Subsequent speakers and planners spent many hours discussing the journey needed to get close to the work that has already been done in the Cayman context.

The feedback about the education transformation of the Cayman Islands was fantastically positive! (GL)

0 comments: