Thony Belizaire/AFP/Getty Images
INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES: EDUCATION
The promotion of healthy cultures and lifestyles among the youth of the Caribbean Community builds on the Region’s continuing successes in education and literacy
The education reforms undertaken in the early 1990s created a changing landscape in the Caribbean: with secondary school education compulsory across many CARICOM countries and literacy rates in the Caribbean growing from a reported average of 70.1 per cent in 2006 to as high as 99.7 per cent in Barbados and 98.6 per cent in Trinidad and Tobago as of 2012. Subsequently, CARICOM’s priorities have shifted from driving primary school education to include more of a focus on secondary, higher and specialised education. Higher levels of skilled and technologically equipped workers will greatly benefit the Caribbean economy, which currently aims to increase its participation in global value chains, partly through enhancing its knowledge base to augment the value of its resourcebased exports. An increasing focus on education will also drive growth of the emerging middle class, which will result in a more stable and prosperous economy and an evolution from a production and services towards a knowledge-based economy. To facilitate this transition, CARICOM has introduced several projects designed to address the educational needs of the Caribbean Region. One of the most forward-thinking and significant of these initiatives is CARICOM’s Education for Employment Program (C-EFE). Launched in Trinidad in March 2012, the programme aims to strengthen Regional capacity to coordinate, promote and conduct quality assurance for
demand-driven technical and vocational education training (TVET) programming and workforce certification, and to raise the employment levels of TVET graduates in targeted, demand-driven programming. It is also designed to strengthen capacity of TVET institutions in order to attract, train and equip citizens with technical and vocational skills that respond to labour market needs. A dozen of the 15 CARICOM countries (Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, St Kitts and Nevis, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago) are currently participating in the scheme, which aims to support the economic development of the entire Caribbean Region.
Technical and vocational training On 16-17 January 2013, St Kitts and Nevis hosted a results-based management workshop as part of C-EFE. Each participating country was asked to propose its priority training requirements. The event opened with a keynote speech from St Kitts and Nevis Minister of Education and Information The Hon. Nigel Carty. The speech addressed technical and vocational education and training, in line with the programme’s core objectives.
CARICOM AT 40
89
2.11 - Education_BS.indd 89
05/03/2014 17:05