New high school features aggression detectors and phone ban

A new high school is opening next month, bringing what it describes as a new ethos and approach – including aggression detectors, a cellphone ban on campus and an overarching philosophy of kindness combined with working hard.

CF High School, newly built in Buttonwood Park, off the Linford Pierson Highway in George Town, already has more than 165 students enrolled, over half of whom are Caymanian. At capacity, the school will cater to a maximum of 225 students, with just 15 children in each class.

So far, Years 7, 8 and 9 are about 90% full, but fewer pupils are in Year 10 and 11.

Although not all the classes are yet filled, the school has a full complement of teachers, said CF director Nicola Sowerby.

She said the response from parents who have already visited the school has been positive.

“The feedback we’ve gotten is, number one, it’s new and shiny and clean and airy, and the small class sizes are really a good selling point,” she said in an interview with Compass Media in the run-up to open days on 22 Aug. and 29 Aug.

The school opens 8 Sept.

A forerunner of the school, called Clever Fish, has been operating on Walkers Road for the past two years, with a much smaller complement of students. The new school is located next to Island Primary, which opened in 2023.

Included in the fees are after-school tuitions, clinics and extracurricular activities till 5:30pm each school day, “which makes us different from schools of a similar nature”, said deputy head James Hickey.

The school's walkways have inspirational names

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The school’s motto, ‘Work hard, be kind’, has also received “a lot of really overwhelmingly positive feedback” from parents and students during earlier open days, said Sowerby. “The world needs more kindness, and we are going out of our way to do our little bit.”

Hickey points out that children “cannot succeed academically unless they are emotionally in a good frame of mind, so, ‘work hard, be kind’, being our priority, means the academic element will fall into place more naturally.”

If the school’s ‘work hard, be kind’ motto, which appears on walls and doors, doesn’t get the message across, inspirational names like Determination Drive, Humility Highway and Success Street are inscribed throughout the campus’s corridors and laneways.

Cellphone ban

The ban on cellphones is being introduced as a means of making the students less anxious while at school, based on research by psychologist Jonathan Haidt, author of the book ‘The Anxious Generation’ and an advocate of phone-free schools.

“We’ve seen a massive rise in anxiety in teenagers at the same time as the release of and accessibility to cellphones,” Sowerby said. “So, we’ve banned those.”

She added, “That’s not to say we won’t have technology. We actually have some really cool technology. The children will all be bringing their own laptops, and we have programmes that we will be using within the classroom and the curriculum for that.”

The school is also using a system called M2 Mirror Talk, which is a tool designed to support teachers, giving them feedback about how they can improve their teaching.

Hickey explained how it works: “One of the things that good teaching involves is your questioning skills, and how you question children. The AI technology, the Mirror Talk, can observe you doing that, and then give you feedback on how you’ve questioned, how many closed questions you’ve asked, how many open questions, and it will give you feedback on how to improve on that.

“That’s just a very small example, but the potential for this is huge, and we want to be on top of the game in terms of cutting-edge technology.”

Aggression detectors

Among that cutting-edge technology is an AI-backed system that the school hopes will deal with de-escalating confrontational issues or bullying, in the form of aggression detectors in all the bathrooms.

“It’s quite common in high schools, over the island, and over the world, to have vape detectors and smoke detectors – which we have – but also, we’re going to have, in our children’s bathrooms, aggression detectors,” Sowerby said.

“They can be programmed to detect certain words … like taking the Lord’s name in vain … and curse words. It will also detect tone and volume. They will come through as alerts to various senior teachers’ phones. So, let’s say we’re having a coffee in the staff room and that alert comes through, we can go straight to that bathroom and deal with things.

“That is all part of our proactive approach to stamp out unkindness.”

Asked if parents had expressed any concerns about privacy issues relating to the detectors, Hickey responded that the equipment will not record anything, and that the school had carried out “due diligence with the necessary agencies to ensure we are compliant with all the data protection laws”.

He added that the school had discussed the issue with parents, and they were aware that the detectors would be in place.

For security purposes, the classrooms, including the well-equipped lab, can only be accessed by key fobs, so children can’t get into the rooms without a teacher being present.

There are also cameras located around the school – but not in the bathrooms, Sowerby points out – that enable senior staff to keep an eye on what’s happening in various areas.

Lunch hour only for lunch and play

At CF, lunchtimes will be specifically and only for lunchtime – not for catching up on homework or getting extra tutoring in mathematics or Latin (a subject taught at the school by its head teacher Steph Rasmussen).

“All the research tells us that children need a cognitive break,” said Sowerby. “Our lunch hour is a lunch hour, and all of our clubs, support clinics, and, God forbid, detentions, will take place outside of that time, so that all children will be able to go outside, get some fresh air, socialise, play chess, play basketball, and talk to each other, without phones.”

The school has also taken on board research by education researcher Mary Myatt, whose findings have shown that students in Years 7, 8 and 9 – aged between 11 and 14 – are often considered as not being as important as the later school forms as they’re not preparing to sit exams.

“They’re sometimes known as ‘The Forgotten Years’,” Hickey said, noting that Myatt argues that those years are actually crucial. “If we work hard and encourage those children to be kind during those years, hopefully, the iGCSEs will fall into place more naturally.”

The school uniform, designed specifically for hot Caribbean island conditions, is shorts, skorts and T-shirts in various designs and colours. And if students are not taking part in physical education or other activity that requires trainers, they can wear Crocs, Sowerby said, noting that the school is getting its own CF-logo Jibbitz – the Croc shoe ‘charm’.

All PE classes will take place off-site, at pickleball courts or the rugby, tennis or football clubs, with students being transported by the school’s minibuses, the educators said, as the campus’s play facilities have been designed to be used only during breaktimes or lunchtimes.

There is also a plan under consideration to provide buses to transport students to and from the school.

Meanwhile, all approvals, inspections and certificates are in place for the school already, says Sowerby, who added, “All we’re waiting on now is the students.”