Bajan

By Gercine Carter Dr Ean Orlando Alleyne is a Barbadian educator who has spent more than 29 years giving of his professional knowledge and expertise outside of Barbados.

The former student of the Erdiston Model School was nine years old when he left the island with his parents Stephanie and Robin Alleyne to live in the United States (US).

Blessed with the sharp intellect he manifested early, he successfully navigated the US educational system, making him a natural selection at Junior High School stage, for the US Advanced Placement For Excellence (APEX) programme.

It placed him in an “accelerated class” for high performing students. His older brother Marc, also a star performer, was in the first cohort of students to go through that programme.

Alleyne’s CV is an impressive chronicle of his academic achievements and a career which exposed him to educational systems and practices in several countries.

He studied in the US, gaining a bachelor’s in secondary education with a mathematics concentration, from Boston University; he also studied for a bachelor’s degree in comparative romance literature from Harvard University. He also has a doctorate from the United Kingdom’s (UK) University of Hartfordshire and a master’s of education in curriculum, pedagogy and assessment from the University of London, Institute of Education. He completed a post-graduate diploma in educational research.

He has been a teacher, a school principal, director of education, academic director, an international schools executive director in the US, UK, Saudi Arabia, Dubai and Kuwait; he directed and managed teacher training and consultation internationally as part of an international baccalaureate programme; he was the founding head of school and executive director of the Al Ekhlas International Education International School of Kuwait and also headed the King Faisal School in Saudi Arabia – and the list goes on.

While he maintains his London base as chief executive officer and educational consultant of Ean Orlando Educational Consultants Ltd, London, Alleyne recently returned to Barbados, ready “to give back” to the education system which gave him the early foundation on which he was able to build a formidable career.

“I feel it’s time. I have never worked in Barbados, but I have never been one to shy away from Barbados and think of Barbados as less than (any other country),” he said.

“I feel the initial education

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I received has lasted me my entire lifetime, as well as the values, and I want to make a contribution.”

The educator’s return is timely, as he indicated, with educational transformation being the buzzwords, when the education planners are looking to chart a new and more appropriate direction for Barbados’ educational system. He believes this is an area in which he can make a contribution.

For one, he would “love to see the 11-Plus examination go”, suggesting the Common Entrance Examination was outmoded and irrelevant to Barbados’ educational needs at this time.

“I do not believe that you should determine someone’s life chances at such a young age,” Alleyne contended.

Instead, he suggested the school-leaving age should be raised to 18 or 19, allowing the 16-year-old to remain at school longer.

“There is no reason why a 16-year-old should be out on the street, so to speak, left to fend for himself,” he said.

“When you reach 16 you don’t even know what you want to do.”

He advocated having a “strategic plan” for educational transformation, in which school principals would be involved, that would include canvassing society at all levels for their thoughts and ideas.

“If you’re going to look at principals, performance and accountability that’s one area of the strategic planning that you want, to give the principals more autonomy; you want them to run their schools in a much more cohesive manner than is happening now . . . student progress and assessment is important . . . as an independent, sovereign nation, we need to have a purpose-built system for our people and the only way we can really amass that, is through canvassing people and really getting their input,” Alleyne said.

The educator also suggested “leadership and teachers’ professional development” should be components of any plan for educational transformation.

However, he was adamant this was not an assignment that should be outsourced since he believed that talent could be found in Barbados. He cited the annual Teachers’ Professional Day as the ideal forum in which such an exercise could be carried out, using the professionalism of teachers in the system who are already at the top of their game.

“You can have a teacher at Harrison College giving a workshop on teaching of mathematics through a real-life lens; you can have a teacher at The St Michael School giving a workshop on how to get students to write academically better.”

He is a teacher who loves what he does, though teaching was not his first choice. He loved playing the flute, even harbouring thoughts of one day becoming principal flautist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He did a brief stint at the Boston Conservatory. However, it was while as a Boston University student, tutoring maths students, he managed to assist one of those students in moving his grades from D to A in ten weeks. This garnered significant publicity for Alleyne, whose students generally were “doing very well”.

It was at that moment he realised “this is something I want to do . . . that I can do . . . teaching is my calling”.

He started teaching at age 20, long before he graduated from university, starting out with Grade 6 at the Marblehead Middle School in Massachusetts.

Alleyne is keen to work with Barbados’ education authorities, to assist with developing a blueprint for education reform, given his considerable experience in planning curricula and training teachers and education planing to think outside of the box in delivering curricula different from the traditional and to meet the demands of the 21st Century.

During his many years of living abroad, Alleyne returned to Barbados frequently. This time, his desire during his intended prolonged stay, is to see and be given a chance to play a role in “the changing of Barbados’ educational landscape”.