Caribbean Education Reform: Insights and Challenges Explored by World Bank Director Lilia Burunciuc

The article by Lilia Burunciuc, World Bank director for Caribbean countries, titled: Call for paradigm shift in Caribbean education, once again highlights a deep-rooted malady — our colonial past — that constrains the full creative potential of our Caribbean peoples. While acknowledging the goal of the article of presenting a case for greater outcomes from our educational system, there seems to be a need for a more in depth look as to why the situation seems to defy solutions.

Readers must be aware that all the territories in the Caribbean since independence have sought to some degree to reform their educational systems in keeping with global demands. A critical factor in this attempt has been a concentrated effort to enhance literacy and numeracy. Tarvis Jules and Hakim Williams divided this period into three phases, namely, first generation reforms (1970s-1980s) that made provision for large scale expansion in primary and secondary schooling; secondly (1989-2000), the provision for tertiary level education and the pursuit of benchmarks influenced by the Dakar EFA goals; and thirdly (2000 to present), issues dealing with equity, accreditation, gender and matching school outcomes with global demands.

Barbados, in particular, has sought to reform, and some might say, transform its educational system to enhance greater educational outcomes in keeping with international changes by implementing two major educational projects. Firstly, there was the Education Sector Enhancement Programme (ESEP) commonly referred to EduTech. Its overarching goal was to increase the number of students contributing to the sustainable social and economic development of Barbados, costing a near half billion in Barbados dollars.

The second project, Reimagining Education in Barbados: A Bright Future for Every Child, (2023) continues to mirror the same educational message, that is, enhancing student outcomes. While the previous project overwhelmingly dealt with the mass introduction of information technology into the curriculum, this second project appears to be consumed with issues such as equity – giving each child a fair share of the educational pie. In the first project, the underlying outcry was that some sixty per cent of students were leaving school uncertificated, however, in the second project, the same charge is being made. There seems, therefore, to be some fundamental deficiency in the way our educational system is delivering at the primary level. Lilia Burunciuc refers to the trend as a “crisis in fundamental learning in the Caribbean.”

In the Barbados situation, the two above named projects have been conceptualised within an educational system with several credits/advantages. Overcrowding is not a problem. There are some primary schools that are seriously underpopulated with amalgamations always an alternative. Trained teachers have for years been a plus within our schools, even within the secondary sector. Our schools have undergone periodic refurbishment although much more needs to be done. Remediation, with emphasis on reading, has been part of the primary school experience for decades. School resources have been provided even if not in maximum quantities. Yet the charge continues to be made that literacy and numeracy at the primary level are not effectively taught to produce children capable of taking full advantage of a secondary school programme.

In spite of some deficiencies at the primary level, there is, however, excellence at the Barbados Scholarship level. Every year the names of these top students are splashed across the media as they rightly prepare themselves for university entrance at home and across the western world. The precursor to the Barbados Scholarship was administered by Codrington College (1819-1828) which enabled Barbadians to enter English universities. However, with the passing of the Education Act of 1878, a new Barbados Scholarship was administered by the government which continues to the present.

This single examination has been able to influence the structure of our educational system from primary, through secondary to tertiary. In essence, it has skewed the school system towards an academic tradition that pays attention to the highly cognitive student to the exclusion of all others with varying degrees of intelligences. At our primary level, the system is stratified so that those with the best chances of gaining a Barbados Scholarship, by way of the older grammar school, is separated early and dealt with specially. This type of stratification goes against every single theory in educational psychology and child development.

The question can therefore be asked. Why is it that most of our students excel at the tertiary level, yet the Barbadian society continues to bemoan the fact that children at the primary level continue to be less literate and numerate? According to Burunciuc: “In many Caribbean countries, students leave primary school without mastering these skills, which hampers their ability to succeed in secondary education and beyond.” In Barbados, where the teaching force is overwhelmingly qualified, there must be something very fundamentally wrong with the way we are teaching our children. And will the present proposed reform strategies impact positively on student outcomes?

From a historical perspective, the past educational reforms in the Caribbean have been instituted without a deep philosophical understanding of the legacy and culture of Caribbean society. The political and educational administrators conceptualise the reform agenda and the practitioners (teachers) rather mechanically attempt to execute. This resulted in an almost ideological detachment between the reform proposals and the implementors. It is still my belief that the White Paper on Education Reform, 1995, offered a serious gate-way to real education reform. Unfortunately, the expectation of the Barbadian society thirty years hence still echoes the same lack of literacy and numeracy skills at the primary and secondary levels.

My sense of history tells me that the recent “re-imagining” educational proposals (2023) will fall short of expectations if the programme is not comprehensively sold to the Barbadian public, with particular emphasis on the teachers and administrators. There must be an ongoing campaign of indoctrination, spelling out the general purpose of the reforms. While I accept the acknowledgement by the Ministry of Education that discussions have taken place amongst the stakeholders, there needs to be ongoing messaging directly between the educational administration and the teachers themselves. The education officers charged with managing school districts must be the ones to meet their school staff regularly (closing school for designated periods of the day if necessary) to ensure that a sufficient number of teachers are well informed of the changes and the reason for them.

Educational phrases such as “each one matters” (1995) and “a bright future for every child” 2023) will become mere catchwords if they are not fully internalised by the system. Success can only be achieved if persons (teachers) charged with that responsibility enter the classroom full of confidence and knowledge to carry out the new reform educational agenda.

Dr Dan C. Carter is an educational historian and author.