Prime Minister Dr. Kenny Anthony.
Below is an edited version of the speech given by Prime minister Dr. Kenny Anthony on ‘Education in the Caribbean: challenges & opportunities facing small developing states’ at the annual lecture of the Saint Lucia association of students at Cave Hill last Tuesday.
There is no place that offers as much freedom as does the university campus. And so, I hope you explore the freedoms that you have because you may never experience them again. And so, sharing with this scholarly community, thanks to the invitation of the Saint Lucia Association of Students at Cave Hill (LUSAC), was an opportunity not to be refused.
So here I am, back in the lecture hall, to continue this Caribbean conversation, and on the issues confronting education in our time.
I was reminded recently at an address last week in Jamaica that good speeches are like mini-skirts: they are just long enough to hide the subject.
I am told that you had the Honourable Prime Minister of St. Vincent, my dear friend and comrade Ralph Gonsalves on campus only last week, delivering an address to Vincentian nationals at an annual lecture similar to this one. If there is one thing we have in common, both Ralph and I are large men. We dare not fit into mini-skirts! And therein lies my early disclaimer.
Moreover, I have a sense of duty to be here to continue to share and impart my views. A leader has a duty to stoke debate and dialogue, and even if this inflames passion and produces discomfort. And indeed, colleagues, few sectors are more in need of such stirring up than that of education.
The theme of tonight’s lecture, ‘Education in the Caribbean: challenges and opportunities for small developing states’, has asked that I become somewhat of a sage. It invites me to cast my gaze beyond the current realities and to sketch some thoughts on what might be salient to the small states of the world, as they seek to empower their people with the new tools that the world requires.
I shall structure this lecture as follows:
1. I will first look generally at the issues of size and relative location as well as cultural and historical underpinnings which generally confront small states. I will explore how these might naturally shape progress within the socio-economic context which education systems must function; and
2. Then, if you are still awake, I will venture into the current state of the education system in small states, with the Caribbean as the principal region of reference. Inevitably, that will draw to reflect on the opportunities that exist to overcome our many challenges.
I would urge you not to look for a list of challenges, followed by a list of opportunities. In the truest Taoist sense, every coin has two sides. Each challenge is in itself a potential opportunity.
AM I A SMALL STATE?
The focus before all of us is that of small developing states, and elucidating the challenges as well as the opportunities for educating the citizens within.
Well, first, Saint Lucians present would be proud to know that one of the leading researchers and contributors towards looking at the issues of education in small states is none other than our island’s Governor General, Her Excellency Dame Pearlette Louisy.
As you may or may not know, Dame Pearlette Louisy was formerly the principal of the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College, and together with her colleagues from the University of Bristol, such as Michael Crossley, has authored numerous papers on the challenges facing the delivery of education in small states.
A review of such literature would in part highlight a major challenge to the education system of small states; that is the attrition of the skilled work force due to high levels of migration. As has been pointed out, in Saint Lucia, nearly 60% of the population which receives a tertiary level education will migrate. The figure is even higher in other small states.
And so, there is a wealth of work which can be referenced on the theme of this lecture. In particular, there are a number of papers on the impacts of globalisation on the tertiary education sector of small states.
However, allow me to first put into firm context the issue of “small states.” In what circumstances does a country qualify to be a small state and what are the likely impacts for a country? What are the pitfalls? Are there any benefits to be gained at all?
There are varied small states classifications used by a number of international organisations, agencies and researchers. Interestingly, a number of small states remain within colonial embrace of major metropolitan powers.
These include overseas territories or jurisdictions that remain the domain of western powers such as the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and even Australia.
Uniquely, the French have treated their overseas jurisdictions as extensions of France itself, so that it considers Martinique, Guadeloupe, Cayenne or even St. Martin as entirely part of France and not separate territories or states.
The general metre of classification is that of population size. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) uses the benchmark of all states with populations of under 1.5 million. This, of course, would mean that countries such as Jamaica would not be considered small applying this dichotomy.
Some institutions consider small states as those with populations under three million. The Commonwealth has adopted a special interest in the status and development of small states partly because most of today’s small independent states were once dependencies of the United Kingdom. By this fact, one commonality among many small states is that they speak English and have adopted British institutions, from government structures to systems of education.
The Commonwealth itself is more embracing in their definition of smallness. It nets, as part of their thirty-three small member states, countries that share similar characteristics to those in the Caribbean, Indian Ocean and the Pacific such as Botswana (pop: 2 million), The Gambia (1.8 million), Jamaica (2.9 million), Lesotho (2.1 million), Namibia (2.1 million), Papua New Guinea (7 million), and at times, even Singapore (5.4 million).
SMALLNESS CAN BE MISLEADING
Such characteristics have to be carefully appreciated, as they could be misleading. Indeed, the characteristics may have little for purposes of comparative analysis.
Singapore, while being slightly larger than Saint Lucia (thanks to continued land reclamation) is by no means small in terms of economy. It is the world’s fourth leading financial centre, has one of the world’s busiest ports and possesses the eleventh largest foreign reserves in the world.
Botswana might be small in population but extends its sovereignty over vast land and mineral resources. All of the Caribbean, including Guyana, Haiti and Suriname could easily be subsumed within its borders, with room to spare for the Dominican Republic.
Using this population metric, with the exception of Haiti and its population of over 10 million, all countries within CARICOM would certainly be classified as small.
THE MICRO STATE
Further to this, the term micro state highlights another reality: that even within this class of states, there exists a special group of smaller states. The states of the Eastern Caribbean find themselves within this classification of micro states.
Again, these are somewhat arbitrarily defined as states with a population of up to 200,000. Moreover, the Caribbean possesses one of the largest clusters of sovereign small states along with the Pacific Island Countries, or the PICs. In the case of the PICs, they are even more greatly challenged by the phenomenon of isolation. There numerous small atolls scattered across endless blue horizons that are separated by vast stretches of ocean.
As such, given these vast differences, often due to history and relative locations, small states are an uneven bag. The classification of Small Island Developing States, or SIDS, more aptly distinguishes Caribbean, Indian and Pacific Ocean sovereignties from other wealthier small states such as San Marino, Monaco, Malta or even Oman.
UNDERSTANDING SMALLNESS
It is important that we correlate the general concerns that have historically been associated with the size and relative location of small sovereign states, because they are also closely related to the issues of viability of these entities; whether in the sense of political, social, economic or even environmental survival.
Small states have always been an enigma, treated as endangered species in human civilisation. This in part may be due, not only to their smallness, but to their insularity. But this is a fatal mistake. There are many small states that have developed into centres of civilisation. Crete, for example, springs to mind. The English may not like it, but relative to the rest of Europe, they are a small state.
There is perhaps no other small state that dominated the world as the United Kingdom did. Its power, its influence, its spread was disproportionate to its size.
If we might take an historical view of this phenomenon, knowledge has been carried and generated by population centres.
These ideas at times became tangible assets to societies and economies, by way of products and services which benefited from innovations or inventions of the time. This process, multiplied many times over, tended to have a growing, cumulative and self-enforcing effect that spurred on further growth, ideas, more and enhanced products, inventions and so on.
Though we have isolated individual cases of dominance and influence by small states, it is generally true to say that throughout our human history, the points of exchange and trade have tended to be at cities, places where human beings came together in collectives. Cities represented the densification or massing of people around shared pursuits, ambitions and values.
Some cities extended their beliefs and control wider and further afield through military conquest and cultural penetration. These population centres were where ideas were shared, analysed, discounted or acclaimed. Many of you are familiar with the phenomenon of city states. Think of Athens, Rome, Venice, Carthage.
The urbanisation of the world has been a necessary stage in our development. This is not to say that knowledge exchange did not happen in rural, isolated locales. However, it tended to happen more and more and with greater intensity in environments that promoted sharing, collaboration, and even competition.
Places of learning developed around cities, whether through schools, colleges and clusters of colleges or universities. At times, cities also developed around places of learning, whether they were monasteries or royal colleges like Cambridge and Oxford.
From antiquity, education was valued by the ruling class as a means of providing the rulers of the time with innovations and ideas so as to maintain social order and entrench their quality of life.
If the ruling class controlled knowledge and how it was applied, it was felt that they might control the masses through shock and awe. Simple feats such as predicting an eclipse carved out a demigod status in the ancient world. In dynastic China, the emperor had rights over all inventions. Concepts of copyrights and patents were clearly not yet appreciated the way we do today.
Now some of you may think this is way off, but I say all this to give context to what in the past promoted the development and spread of knowledge.
Knowledge was often crafted and passed on in great meeting places, confluences of great rivers; hardly ever in backwaters or small rocks cast as points of rest for the migratory bird.
CLUSTERS & KNOWLEDGE COMMUNITIES
Even today, we cannot recant this past reality within the notion of clusters. Clusters are often seen as places that spur on learning and innovation: the massing of communities and enterprises which promote sharing of resources and knowledge.
In modern times, a very notable one is that of Silicon Valley, a cluster of towns and cities in California’s Santa Clara Valley, which has now become home to several research parks and technology companies from Apple and Amazon to Yahoo and Youtube.
The presence of Stanford University promoted its growth as a high-tech innovation centre. In fact, over time, numerous universities and colleges opened up campuses there as a result of this massing of expertise. The question is: within the reordering of the world, can any Caribbean state evolve to become a cluster of knowledge, innovation and intellectual excellence, with a global sphere of influence?
Places dedicated to learning and research provide new opportunities for growth. The root of the term university came as a reference to a community of teachers and scholars. Knowledge, ideas and innovation flourish when there is sharing; when there are many paths for collaboration.
There were of course other ingredients that were needed to spur on innovation and learning.
As was alluded the respect of intellectual property and academic freedom for expression and discovery were certainly pre-requisites.
CONSTRAINTS OF SMALLNESS & ISOLATION
We can now observe, therefore, the natural constraints of smallness and isolation juxtaposed against the catalysts of learning and innovation.
I contend that smallness alone is not really the issue, but rather it is isolation. The degree of separation which the state experiences from the flows of knowledge and ideas is what can stymie growth and education. It is an issue of discontinuity, disconnectedness, disunity from a broader network of communities. These discontinuities can manifest themselves in numerous ways.
PHYSICAL SEPARATION
First, there is the obvious physical separation which makes travel challenging. These days for instance, LIAT has the most bizarre routes. In some instances, to get to Saint Lucia from Barbados, you first have to fly to Dominica.
Even so, while some treat the sea as a barrier, there are some small countries which are landlocked and face their own forms of isolation. Again, one man’s challenge is another man’s opportunity.
CONJURING MISTRUST
Then, there are the socio-cultural barriers.
Sadly, language still remains a barrier to the Caribbean. We speak English, French, Spanish and Dutch, as well as a variety of Creole languages. For a long time, these were also political demarcations and in some ways they still at times conjure mistrust and misunderstanding. It is not too long that we finally embraced non-English speaking countries as full members of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).
Such motes at times blind us from beholding the opportunities that are often next door. For example, the University of the Antilles, perhaps unknown to you because it is based in the French Overseas Departments of Martinique and Guadeloupe, provides a vast offering of academic programmes.
STATELESS EXISTENCE
Sadly, these barriers are often erected by people, motivated by politics, populism and prejudices.
Take for example the fairness gripping the island of Hispaniola or Ayiti; and specifically to what is currently being suggested by the Dominican Republic’s Courts in the case of persons born in the Dominican Republic of Haitian parents.
It can never be right that persons who are born in a country can be denied the right of citizenship within that same country. What this September 30th ruling by the Dominican Republic’s Constitutional Court has effectively done is to banish hundreds of thousands of persons who were born on Dominican soil and to relegate them to a stateless existence. Many of these people speak Spanish, not Haitian Creole. This is indeed a most callous and insensitive invective of people based on their ancestry.
These barriers to people cause only harm, only discord and only perpetuate division. They cannot in any way be a step towards integrating the Caribbean as a community.
BARRIERS TO TRADE AND TRAVEL
Finally, the economic barriers lie primarily with the ease with which such small states in the Caribbean can trade, and how easily they can source capital and investment. Many of these barriers arise due to the challenges of securing what is termed market presence in trading partner countries, as well as impediments to access these markets.
For example, the Air Passenger Duty imposed by the United Kingdom Government was seen as one impediment to trade in tourism for the Caribbean.
The challenge of gaining visas to the United States generally serves as an impeding filter to the movement of people for business opportunities.
It should be clear that any threat of an embargo on a small state, whether it is the cutting off of the flows of knowledge or of trade, could be far more disastrous than on larger states with sufficient internal resources that might be used or substituted.
SINUOUS AND VOLATILE
And so, the small state is innately vulnerable and its economic prospects more sinuous and volatile than the larger state.
The challenges faced by small states have been well defined over the years, particularly since the Caribbean played a leading role in raising the concerns of Small Island Developing States or SIDS about two to three decades ago.
In this regard, we cannot forget the work of the great integrationist, the great pioneer, William Demas, a former president of the Caribbean Development Bank.
Since the treatises by Demas, there has been a more concerted effort to analyse the realities of small states and how that affects various aspects of development, including education.
The general threats facing small states in the Caribbean might be abridged as follows:
1. First, the resource base for development is generally very constrained. In the Caribbean, most of these islands are very small, and activities such as agriculture can be even further constrained by challenging topography and soils. Few of the islands have known mineral deposits of an extractable value;
2. Secondly, they are very open and depend heavily on international trade and are thus generally highly susceptible to global market volatility and fluctuations in commodity prices and global demand. The cost of this international trade also tends to be high due to fixed costs such as shipping and relatively small volumes leading to no scale advantages. You would appreciate that competitiveness in the areas of manufacturing is generally flat, particularly if the country is a net importer of energy;
3. They suffer from the high cost of management and administration in both the private and public sectors. That is to say, they must maintain the basic requirements for the governance of the state regardless of their size. In effect, this generally places restrictions on how well they can provide some public goods and services, resulting in some sectors being short-changed. It also means that their management structures and processes sometimes lack the sophistry of larger states. Just to explain what I mean, one might hazard to suggest that in a small state, processes such as obtaining a passport of birth certificate would take less time than in a large country. However, this is perhaps not what you would experience in many Caribbean countries;
4. The infrastructure requirements as well as the cost of infrastructure are generally high. The Caribbean has perhaps some of the highest densities of international airports in the world. Every island needs port infrastructure. Construction on a whole tends to be costly due to high levels of imported inputs; and
5. Lastly, vulnerability to natural disasters among small states is extremely high. IMF data has shown that the Caribbean is the most disaster prone region of the world. This is to be only exacerbated by the effects of anthropogenic climate change.
CULTURAL PROJECTION & ASSIMILATION
There is also another impact of the smallness and isolation of states, and that is, its effects on the psyche and culture of the inhabitants. Cultural projection and assimilation is a powerful tool to the hegemonic power. It is projected through language, literature, fashion, sport, the arts and beliefs, including prejudices, and certainly through education.
I am sure you have heard many times the saying, “when in Rome, you do like the Romans.” However, Rome was not just the city.
The power of Rome was to make the person born in any province, from Britannia to Africa, feel that they could aspire to become citizens; that they were equally Roman and in so doing practice Roman culture and outlook.
As a corollary, the colonial history of small states and the interactions between the ruling class and the general population were not often built on such equalities but on the might of the empire. It has left vestiges and institutions that are not often questioned from a first principles approach to nation building.
If we were therefore to summate these factors and liken our small states to businesses, we might say that we run a company with high input costs, high losses, and also fairly low productivity. As a business, the worst situation you may want to be in is providing a high-cost, low quality product, and this is what confronts much of the Caribbean today.
THERE ARE POSITIVES
By now, you must be thinking that being a small, isolated state is the worst position ever to be in. There are in fact benefits to being small.
A critical advantage might come from the ability to leverage social capital. Small states with their small populations should in theory be able to engender greater levels of networking and collaboration. The value of trust is more likely to be appreciation. Due to isolation and the hardship of regular disasters, small societies can be more resilient. Small societies should also be more able to promote reforms quicker than larger ones.
However, this positive outlook can be quickly disfigured within a Caribbean constrained by the unfortunate biases imposed by past external cultural assimilation and penetration.
Therefore, for small states to prosper and leverage their strengths, they must strongly inculcate identity, work at affirming good culture and values, and embrace tools that promote the accumulation of social capital.
THE GLOBAL WORLD
It is now for small states to seize the opportunities created by the dramatic changes now taking place in the world.
The Globalisation of nearly all human engagements has been promoted by technological advancements in how we move and exchange products and knowledge. This means that small island states are no longer as isolated from the rest of the world as before.
We have experienced perhaps three revolutions interwoven into one: there was first an energy revolution; then it was followed by a revolution in communications and now we have a revolution in the growth of information or knowledge. The result is that the world has never been as connected and powered as it has been before.
Globalisation has unleashed massive expansion in the following:
1. The movement of goods and services, or in effect trade and transactions;
2. The movement of people, manifested best by global migration and tourism;
3. The movement of capital and investment; and
4. The movement of knowledge and information.
Thankfully, globalisation continues to break down many of the barriers that traditionally isolated small states. We earlier mentioned the barrier of language. In Saint Lucia now, many citizens are now fluent in Spanish, a direct result of them studying in Cuba. We are seeing a similar trend even with Mandarin thanks to numerous scholarships to Taiwan.
MEASURING OUTPUTS
Unquestionably, we must introduce new tools for the measurement and analysis of the education skills. How well skilled and knowledgeable are its products, how does it meet the need of employers, does it promote economic growth, and so forth?
And do all these outputs provide feedback to improve the quality of inputs to begin with? That is to say: do people become better parents, does poverty diminish, have people become less prejudicial, are our voters more sophisticated and balanced in their judgments?
Moreover, if the education system does not fit into broader systems, then there will be mismatches. For instance, we are seeing a large mismatch in the labour markets of many small states.
We generally don’t want masons or, for that matter, lawyers as plumbers, though sometimes I think that’s likely what we get.
A CHALLENGE OF RELEVANCE AND VALUE
Whether you are home watching television or at a lecture tonight, one would hope that you are in search of knowledge.
Education must present value to the individual and the community. For something to have value, it must have currency, it must be relevant, it must enrich. You must want it to be preserved. The question is then, how much is education valued within society?
We really need to ask some searching questions.
Does education shape how we make decisions? Do we develop policy through rigorous testing? Do we insist on research and data analysis?
Does the business community derive value from the education system? Are they satisfied with the returns? Are parents satisfied?
If we were to survey the population, in this or any other Caribbean state, and ask whether they were satisfied with the value-for-money received from the education system, what would the result be?
The intriguing trend that we continue to witness is for knowledge to be acquired from many sources outside of the formal education system. Mass communications and the Internet are now universalising access to information.
AN EMPHASIS ON COLLABORATION
Where then will the education system fit in the future world? One clear advantage that the school has over individualised extra mural learning is that of preparing people for collaborative environments.
As mentioned, small states need to emphasize collaboration because of the scarcity of resources, human or otherwise. Some researchers even suggest that 75% of time spent in the classroom should be the reinforcing and teaching of collaboration and group communications. This is indeed the great value of universities, as it is of all communities of learning.
SHAPING THE UNDERLYING PHILOSOPHY
The education system must fit into the broader opportunities for work, for life, and for research and innovation.
The first step in the development of an education system should be the shaping of the underlying philosophy upon which sets the value of education to the society and the rationale for education.
Innately, any education system should impart in some ways the three following tenets:
1. It should allow for the freedom of the human spirit to pursue discovery, inquiry and expression as a natural undertaking of all human beings. This can be seen in the natural passion of a human being to seek knowledge and to find answers. It is the search of pure knowledge as distinct from learning for the sake of it. This is often the force which drives academicians and researchers. Education that should equip the individual with the methodologies, tools and temperament to pursue the inner secrets of knowledge;
2. It should also provide a level of preparation for the individual to be able to live within varied and even concentric communities and to function within the society through the respect of rules and conventions and the appreciation of various spheres of life. The concepts of citizenship learning, civics, artistic appreciation, the ability to collaborate, pride and identity, the ability to share and speak freely and so forth might be captured as enablers to this objective; and
3. Finally, it should provide for the country the basis for productive work, economic growth and sustainability by nurturing relevant skills, knowledge and aptitudes for the world of work.
By now, you might already be contemplating that a good, robust education system in a small state is asked to achieve many things. It is sadly believed to be the solution to all problems, without appreciating the broader educative cosmos of homes, media, culture and the community. The end result is that it often does not achieve any of these three goals.
QUANTITY AND QUALITY NOT TRADEABLE
In the Caribbean, the approach of small states has been to concentrate on universal access to education. Undoubtedly, this is a completely necessary requirement to achieve a productive labour force and civilised society.
In an efficient education system, its capacity should be carefully aligned to the current capacity requirements throughout each stage of the system.
In the past, small states were concerned with finding enough school places to deal with the rapidly expanded youthful population. The focus was usually within the primary and secondary years and focused on achieving universal throughput.
A system, however, cannot be operated in one dimension and be expected to provide results. Quantity cannot be merely traded in lieu of quality.
In other words, the systems of many small states were largely able to take in all that were fed to them and hopefully to output positive outcomes. This was without a careful look at the internal mechanics: the curriculum, teaching quality and learning environment.
The unfortunate result, of course, has been an increase in failure rates and drop outs, albeit while the overall gross numbers achieving satisfactory learning outcomes have increased.
In the Caribbean small state, the system remains a one-size-fits-all affair, though great strides have been made in some jurisdictions to improve teaching capabilities and access to special education.
In the meantime, we proudly boast of the geniuses with more grade ones than they have years in their ages, only in the hope that we might forget the majority that fail Mathematics, a core subject. Did the school nurture top performers, or are these children remarkable survivors of a failing system.
Today, the great challenge of education in small states of the Caribbean now lies in the quality of the output. In other words, we want to know that the education system is responsive to individual needs.
THE EQUITY CHALLENGE
However, we should not see this only as a two dimensional tango of quantity and quality.
There is an invaluable third dimension to developing an education system within a small state, and that is equity.
Allow me to illustrate. Let us assume that we make great improvements to our education system to the point that, in say twenty years, 80% of the students within the eligible age cohort come out with well above average learning outcomes.
However, does this represent a pyrrhic victory to society if the other 20% are far below the required expectations? What becomes of this 20%? Will they become a negative load that drags down the gains of the majority? Can we afford the loss of that 20% when we are faced with a small human resource base?
Thus, equity can be cast as a measure of how well we can reduce variability at the output side, even when great variability exists at the input.
For instance, in highly equitable systems, the relationship or correlation between poor socio-economic background and poor learning outcomes should tend towards nought.
To achieve this, countries in the world with highly equitable education systems place a high emphasis on personalising education.
Children who need special attention are given it, not late on in the educative process, but through early intervention.
There is a deliberate effort at managing the welfare of students, particularly the potentially troubled students. Welfare groups are established to monitor individual progress.
REBALANCING RESOURCES
Can this be achieved here in Caribbean small states today? In many cases, perhaps it can be. There has long been a debate as to whether we are spending enough on education. The debate may have different answers in various small states. However, it is clear that we have never spent more on education today than in the past. Education spending as a percentage of GDP, remains higher in Caribbean small states, compared to other regions of the world, and despite the global economic challenges.
Nearly all middle-income small states face high debt levels and so there is little room to expand spending in education. The challenge that leaders ultimately face is how to allocate resources more effectively.
TROUBLESOME FINANCING
This raises the very troublesome issue of financing tertiary education. How can we, without causing injury to the society as a whole, continue to finance higher education? The approaches of the past have now come full circle. Countries which have approached the financing of tertiary education by making loans available to students are contending with high delinquency rates. Countries which once boasted of free university education are beginning to reverse such policies in the face of fiscal imbalances.
It means that there must be a level of ownership and accountability shown on the part of education institutions and policy makers in finding innovations to do more with less. The economics of education need not result in economy-class learning. It also means equally that the population must be willing to value education even more than a car or a house.
SPACE FOR MORE
But there is another interesting phenomenon at work. In many schools, thanks to declining birth rates witnessed in many small states, there is in fact space for more new opportunities. For example, early childhood centres, if carefully segregated, can be integrated into many primary school campuses at a lower cost than building green field facilities. Giving our children an early start sets the foundation for greater success and better performance later on.
LEVERAGING TECHNOLOGY
The resource challenge also faces many tertiary level institutions. How can we expand tertiary level enrolment without bankrupting the country? Well, the answer, I think you already know lies within the drivers of globalisation: leveraging ICT and expanding the size of global market share for education.
Information and Communications Technology is the change driver and equaliser for the small state. It should be our greatest ally, our surest friend. It is what allows that massive revolution in access regardless of where you find yourself, including on a small island.
Learning and excellence can now be conceived ubiquitously, even in the remote backwater, or the rural respite.
We have seen the rise of DeVry, of Phoenix University and a plethora of online learning opportunities, and this of course can be viewed with dearest contempt and consternation by some traditionalists. However, MOOCs are here for good [pronounced “mooks”]. These massive open online courses are becoming more interactive and indeed more popular as a medium for learning.
Should we fight the trend towards downloadable lectures? How many of you would have already hit the pause button on this one already? Is there anything necessarily wrong with that?
Universities cannot continue to fight this. Rather, we need to see how best to marry the new with the old. Already, we see a plethora of offerings of distance learning opportunities through a number of private tertiary level institutions offering degrees through this medium.
COMPARATIVE EDUCATION
What is also more apparent is the globalisation of education itself. Of course, it can be an opportunity as well as a challenge. UWI, for instance, may never have foreseen thirty years ago the massive challenge it now faces in terms of competition with schools that are now opening up campuses in the region, and targeting regional students. UWI in itself has now had to place its focus not merely as a regional institution, but as a global institution if it is to survive into the future.
There is now a global recognition that quality education is essential for human development. People will even relocate for it. The rise in comparative education has only strengthened competition, generally in a positive way.
There is now a worldwide fascination with the Finnish way of education, for instance, thanks to the years of comparative analysis brought through the OECD’s PISA [pronounced “pee-zuh”] tests.
The same can be said for other international testing platforms in areas such as Mathematics and Science literacy, such as TIMMS.
The small state can now in fact begin to consider benchmarking how good its education system is in producing learning outcomes.
Education is never an easy topic to discuss because of its complexities; the passions and emotions it raises; and the breadth of issues to be discussed.
I hope I have left you with a sufficient shell around which you might formulate the answers needed to cause introspection.
What I hope to leave you with is some comfort in knowing that size no longer dictates greatness. The opportunities for small states, even in the face of high debt and increased natural disasters have not diminished, they have increased.
The opportunities lie in reforming education to become an institution of excellence, as well as equity; tailored to the specific ambitions in becoming great small states.
The opportunities can be found in ensuring that education is valued at all levels of society.
The opportunities lie with embracing ICT in all facets throughout the education system.