Education for All in the Caribbean: Promise, Paradox and Possibility

Abstract

The vision of Jomtien was simple and powerful: every person – child, youth and adult – shall be able to benefit from educational opportunities designed to meet their basic learning needs. In other words: Education for All (EFA). Although Universal Primary Education (UPE) had long been part of the rhetoric of Caribbean governments, the World Conference on Education for All held in Thailand in 1990, attended by almost every country of the world, every development agency, and a large collection of national and international non-governmental agencies, made it both universal and official: education, not only in primary school, but for young children, youth and adults as well. Education was therefore to be regarded as a fundamental right of humankind. As with so many other things, this is proving to be more easily said than done. Between 1990 and 2000, many EFA committees were formed and EFA action plans and programmes drafted, but these were often neither credible nor comprehensive and were mostly inspired by donors rather than by education ministries and other ministries tasked with their implementation (UNESCO, 2011). Despite increased funding from some donors and increased government spending on education in the Caribbean, the goal of achieving EFA still continues to be elusive in several ways for several countries. The World Education Forum in Dakar in 2000 reported on the results of the previous decade, which, arguably, were fairly disappointing. As a result, several goals were tweaked, placing greater emphasis on gender, quality, equity, and the ‘learning’ and ‘skills’ needed for emerging knowledge societies. The rhetoric was now tempered and the discourse shifted to sustainable development in a globalising world and to the personalised knowledge and skills needed to live in such a world and away from basic education. As one might expect, EFA reports paint a mixed picture of progress and decline; success and failure for the Caribbean region in meeting the EFA goals. Back in 2000, Errol Miller, in his report Education for All in the Caribbean in the 1990s: retrospect and prospect (2000) suggested more time was needed to achieve the EFA goals in the Caribbean. Miller also noted that, although the spirit and intent to achieve the goals might have been present, the will and resources were not. More than two decades later, there is increasing complexity in attaining the goals of EFA and what the initiators of these goals might have imagined. Indeed the discourse around the goals in the Caribbean is only now becoming a popular language, although not a language used and understood by all. In the period from 1990 to 2000, between the Jomtien and Dakar conferences, major challenges included: the lack of expansion and improvement of early childhood care and education; high repetition and drop-out rates in primary education; difficulties in expanding educational opportunities for young people; a lack of opportunities for young adults; a lack of equity in the provision of education which has resulted in certain social groups being left at the margin of the