CARICOM Caribbean’s HRD 2030 strategy: inscribing the neoliberal imaginary through social planning?

Abstract

ABSTRACT The globalisation’s ‘knowledge economy’ has created a new set of human capital requirements. The guiding policy and planning document, The CARICOM Human Resource Development 2030 Strategy: Unlocking Caribbean Human Potential document, ‘serves as a roadmap for the CARICOM Caribbean’s responses to these human capital demands. I conduct a critical analysis of this document’s policy discourses to ascertain their core values and strategies, as well as their implications for the education and development of the CARICOM Caribbean. I find that the emergent discourses and ideas – neoliberal education reform and state-led social planning – provide a cautionary tale of the potential impact of educational change driven by the neoliberal imaginary of globalisation. A chief concern is that as the discourse of education as a tool for social planning is utilised according to a neoliberal logic of the education system operational reform discourse, the deep social development problems already characterising Caribbean education and other development challenges, may very well be exacerbated.