Barbados’ drive to transform early childhood learning reached a milestone on Tuesday when Maria Holder Nursery School in Gall Hill, Christ Church, was declared the country’s first school of excellence.
The model institution is being held up as a laboratory, training centre and standard-bearer for play-based and student-centred education under the government’s wider reforms.
The new centre will showcase best practices in STREAM – Science, Technology, Reading, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics – while drawing on Montessori and Reggio Emilia principles of early childhood teaching which emphasise learning through play.
Project-based learning will be central, with teachers encouraging children’s creativity, inquiry and holistic development, officials said.
Education officials said the lessons taken from the school of excellence will guide the national roll-out, with the aim of producing confident, resilient and curious lifelong learners.
Minister of Educational Transformation Chad Blackman stressed that “it is not simply about standing before the class and saying one plus one is two, A down to Z, give them an exam, you pass, or you fail. No. How do you now capture the minds of these young people to take on the challenges of the world, but starting with the fundamentals, confidence, exposure, nature, and putting it all toge ther”.
From September 2026, these methods will be embedded across all state early childhood institutions. Supporting programmes include the Heggerty phonological awareness tool in nurseries, Snappy Sounds and MooBELL reading in primary and selected secondary schools, and the introduction of chess to sharpen strategic thinking. Officials said the goal is that all pupils can read by age seven and think several steps ahead in both school and life.
Training is seen as essential to making the model work. Chief Education Officer Dr Ramona Archer-Bradshaw noted that 25 teachers received extensive training in play-based approaches between 2022 and 2023. “When you consider a centre of excellence, you have to ensure that the teachers are trained firstly in the area,” she said.
Dr Archer-Bradshaw described the centre as “a hub designed to redefine early learning with creativity, care, and purpose”, adding that it is intended to nurture “the boundless potential of every child through early education.”
She also pointed to upgrades in the school environment: “Additionally, we have invested in this school when it comes to physical resources. So if you look at the grounds, you will realise that there is … you have the horses, the areas for children to play. They’re also learning corners, where the children can go and interact with different materials. They have a literacy corner, they have a theatre corner, different kinds of corners.”
The nursery has also been designated a lab school in partnership with Erdiston Teachers’ Training College, where student teachers will observe best practice before reforms are rolled out across the sector. Research from Erdiston and the University of the West Indies will feed into national policy planning, with ongoing monitoring from education officers.
Blackman described the designation as “a very exciting time for education in Barbados”. Stressing that early learning is about much more than care, he said: “Early childhood education is not just about having your children come, as you call it, for daycare. Science has shown that children between the ages of three and five, those years are the formative years … once they can learn new concepts and new exciting things, that goes on for the rest of your life in terms of development and the prospects of development.”
Framing the effort as a global challenge, Minister Blackman added: “Their competition now and for the next 18 years are their counterparts in Africa, Asia, North America, Latin America, and of course the Caribbean. So we have to give these young children a global head start if we’re to continue to have a high quality of life that we are all accustomed to.” (SZB)
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