Gumbs: St. Maarten’s Language Reality Must Be Addressed in Education Reform

GREAT BAY--Minister of Education, Culture, Youth and Sport Melissa Gumbs told Parliament on Wednesday that the Ministry is developing a national language policy to address language-related disparities in education, after assessment results showed that student performance is influenced by both the language used at home and the language of instruction in school.

The Minister made the comments while responding to questions from Members of Parliament on the Early Grade Reading Assessment, the Early Grade Mathematics Assessment and the national assessment results. The discussion focused in part on whether students in English-language streams are performing better than students in Dutch-language streams, and whether children who speak English at home appear to have an advantage in certain areas.

Minister Gumbs confirmed that comparative analysis by language of instruction was conducted and reflected throughout the reports. She said the Group 3 EGRA and EGMA reports examined performance across Dutch and English instructed schools in several areas, including addition, number discrimination, problem solving, listening comprehension, and broader comparative trends between English and Dutch instructed schools. She also said the Group 5 national assessment included extensive comparative analysis by language of instruction across performance areas.

According to the Minister, the findings are being further examined as part of the Ministry’s broader review of the assessment results and the development of the national language policy. She said the Ministry is not looking at the results in isolation, but as part of wider education reform that includes curriculum alignment, classroom support, teacher development, language realities and progress monitoring.

In response to questions from MP Ardwell Irion, who raised concern that English streams and students who speak English at home appear to be performing better, Minister Gumbs said the Ministry is developing the language policy specifically to address disparities tied to language. She said the policy will guide curriculum reform and help the Ministry respond to the differences shown in the data.

The Minister emphasized that the differences in performance are influenced by both language exposure and the quality of instruction. She also addressed the importance of both Dutch and English as languages of instruction, noting that the education system must carefully consider how language affects learning outcomes while also strengthening instruction across the board.

Gumbs also referred to the analysis contained in the reports, including a regression analysis in the Group 3 report. According to her explanation, the analysis found that students who speak the language of instruction at home scored meaningfully higher in oral reading fluency. The same analysis also found that access to a tablet at home correlated with stronger reading outcomes, while parental encouragement was positively linked to academic performance.

The Minister said the findings also point to school-level factors. She explained that the regression analysis looked at how much variation in student performance is connected to the school a child attends versus individual student characteristics. In one example, number identification showed strong school-level influence, meaning the school a child attends can significantly affect performance in that area. Gumbs said that type of information is important in determining where support, resources and interventions should be targeted.

MP Veronica Jansen-Webster also sought clarification on whether parents who do not speak Dutch at home should be advised to place their children in English-language schools. The Minister responded that such a decision depends on the parent and the child. She noted that she has attended primary school graduations where the top student in a Dutch stream came from a Chinese or Spanish-speaking home, which she used to underscore that language at home is important, but not the only factor. She said parental involvement and parental commitment also play a major role in student performance.

The Ministry’s position, as presented by Gumbs, is that St. Maarten’s language reality must be addressed through structured policy rather than simple conclusions about one stream being better than another. She said performance is shaped by several factors, including language exposure, instruction quality, school-level support, classroom practice and parental engagement.

The Minister said the Ministry remains available to provide further clarification on the assessment correlations, conclusions and policy implications, so that the discussion can focus not only on the results themselves, but also on what the data means for the way forward.

Gumbs also stressed that the broader response to the assessment results will be tied to the Ministry’s system-wide approach to improving foundational literacy and numeracy. This includes school-level interventions, targeted remediation, teacher support, progress assessments and the planned follow-up national assessment in 2027 for Groups 3, 5 and 7.

The development of the national language policy is expected to form part of the Ministry’s larger effort to align curriculum, assessment and classroom instruction with the realities of St. Maarten’s multilingual student population.

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