Loading
© 2026 The Insurance Corporation of Barbados Ltd. (ICBL). All rights reserved.
103 Primary School students have made the upcoming Finals of the ICBL Junior Spelling Bee competition, up from 80 in 2023. This outcome represents 81% of the participating contestants, a 6% increase over last year.
Following the Preliminary rounds last Friday, ICBL's Marketing and Communications Consultant, Averil Byer, said: We are very encouraged by the 2024 results as we celebrate the fifth anniversary of this worthwhile event. There were marked improvements in the spelling when compared to previous years. One school whose students were all eliminated in this round in 2023 returned this year, with all four of their children moving forward to the finals. That’s progress. Credit must be given to the teachers putting in hard work to improve their students' spelling and inspiring them to read more. The number of schools entering the competition also increased from 107 last year to 128 this year, the highest number of students since the beginning of competition in 2019.”
The stage is now set for a highly competitive and thrilling Spelling Bee Final, with a record 15 of the 33 participating schools still with their entire teams intact following the eliminations at the Preliminaries.
The ICBL National Spelling Bee Competition Finals will be staged on November 15, 2024, at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre. In addition to the championship trophy, the winning student will receive $2500 from ICBL, two airline tickets to London on Virgin Atlantic, and a Laptop from Promotech Inc. Other prizes for the top performers include cash from ICBL, Staycations, adventures, lunches, and dinners from the tourism sector, and trophies for the 2nd and 3rd placed winners. The top three winning schools will each receive cash prizes from ICBL, with the winning school taking home the perpetual plaque for the year.
