Dame Avisene Carrington

Avisene Caesaretta Inniss was born on 17 September 1918 in the Ivy, St Michael, Barbados, to Robert and Beatrice Inniss. Her father worked as a conductor on the railway that ran from Bridgetown to Belleplaine in St Andrew, and she later recalled that he valued education and gave his daughters a lively and happy childhood. She was one of three sisters. Her sister Constance L. Inniss also became a teacher and headmistress, lived past 100 and was featured on a Barbados postage stamp.

Her mother was a devout Anglican and the family worshipped at St Barnabas, while the girls attended the Belmont Methodist Sunday school. She attended Belmont Girls' School, walking about a mile each way, and then St Michael's Girls' School, which she left in July 1937. She later said she chose teaching because she had always wanted to be with children.

In September 1937, aged 18, she began teaching at St Giles Boys' School, serving her first year as an honorary teacher before being paid. She was mentored by Ignatius Byer and Glyne Atherley and trained formally at Erdiston Teachers' Training College. Her pupils at St Giles in the 1940s included the cricketer Sir Wes Hall, and she became known for her persistence with children who struggled to learn.

After about twenty years in the public service she felt something was missing. "I wanted to create a different atmosphere for children," she said in 2018, explaining that government schools taught too rigidly. In 1959, when her three-year-old son Ian fussed each morning as she left for work, she started a playgroup at her home at 15 Pine Road, St Michael, with six children. She named it Merrivale to reflect what she called a new approach founded on the joy of childhood, drawing on Montessori ideas of hands-on learning.

She never advertised. The school spilled onto the verandah and around the house until, in 1967, her husband oversaw the building of a schoolhouse on the property. The roll reached about 220 in the 1980s, with pupils from other Caribbean islands and from England, France, Scotland, Norway and Denmark. Merrivale became one of the best known private primary schools in Barbados, and its former pupils included Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley. The bell rang for the last time in June 2010, when she retired in her early nineties.

She married Vere Carrington at St Matthias Church in December 1947. Reports have described him as an attorney-at-law and as a former permanent secretary. They were married for 45 years and had three children: Ronnie, a well known videographer, Shelley and Ian. The family moved to Pine Road in 1956 and worshipped at St Cyprian's Anglican Church. Friends and former pupils called her Aunty Avis or Dame Avis. Her life was told in the biography Simply Teacher, written by her daughter-in-law Hazel Lindo-Carrington.

Dame Avisene Carrington died on the morning of Saturday 31 October 2026, aged 108, weeks after celebrating her birthday on 17 September. No cause of death was made public. She was survived by three children and three grandchildren.

Her death was reported by the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation, the Nation and Barbados Today. Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley, her former pupil, issued a tribute as the country prepared for the start of its Independence celebrations. "Barbados has lost a giant and I have lost a lifelong anchor," she said. "She was my principal at Merrivale, one of the people beyond my family who helped to make me who I am. Whatever else changed in my life, she remained Mrs Carrington."

Dame Avisene is remembered as a pioneer of child-centred early childhood and primary education in Barbados. For more than half a century Merrivale offered a gentler, more practical alternative to the rigid teaching of the time, and many of its pupils went on to serve at the highest levels of Barbadian life. Her honours, the Silver Crown of Merit in 1994 and the Dame of St Andrew in 2018, recognised that contribution. Asked how she wished to be remembered, she answered: "Simply Teacher".