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The World Bank has sounded the alarm on what it describes as an “education crisis” in the Caribbean, noting the need for urgent action to improve the quality of education across the region.
“We are in the middle of the worst learning crisis of the century,” said Jaime Saavedra, the World Bank’s director of human development for Latin America and the Caribbean.
“The data we have is alarming.”
Saavedra made the comments last week during a webinar titled, “Education Transformation: Addressing the Learning and Skills Crisis in the Caribbean.”
He noted that the 2024 Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) results indicated only five percent of students passed five or more subjects, while only 36 percent passed mathematics.
To add to the concern, he said, the data show that even the best-performing Caribbean students are “still struggling to meet global standards”.
“All this points to a crisis in foundational learning, which limits students’ ability to then succeed in secondary school, finish their education trajectories and transition successfully to the labor market,” he said.
Saavedra said improvements need to be made in three key areas – teachers, the learning environment and measurement.
“The quality of an education system largely reflects the quality of its teachers,” he said.
“In many cases, teachers lack the tools, training and incentives to succeed. That is why in the whole region, moving to a meritocratic system is essential.
“Selection, professional development and performance management standards for teachers should be designed consistent with a career that is socially valued.
“What matters is always to have the best people in the teaching career.”
However, Saavedra said teachers also need a conducive learning environment with the right materials, the right methods of instruction and the right technology.
He noted that data and measurement of progress is also a “critical factor”.
“One of the major challenges in the Caribbean is that countries are sometimes flying blind,” he said.
Saavedra noted that while regional exams provide some information on learning outcomes, not all students participate in them, and some prepare for them outside of school.
Additionally, he said that there is rarely data comparing Caribbean students’ performance to that of students worldwide.
He noted that Jamaica was the only country in the Caribbean that participated in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2022.
Trinidad participated in PISA 2015.
“What the region urgently needs is information systems to track the learning of each student and communicate results on a regular and timely basis so that schools and teachers can decide how to better support them with the right data,” Saavedra said.
Dr. Victoria Levin, senior economist in the World Bank’s education global practice, said that while Caribbean students are expected to spend more than 12 years in school on average, low harmonized test scores suggest they are not acquiring knowledge effectively, leading to a high learning loss.
“Caribbean students are losing on average four and a half years due to the quality of education,” Levin said.
She said one of the key drivers is outdated teaching practices that “focus on delivering a rigid curriculum that is often misaligned with the needs of 21st-century learners”.
Levin also said that teachers do not get enough support “in adjusting their instructional approaches, learning how to integrate the fostering of social-emotional skills, or how to support students with special educational needs”.
“Some countries lack professional standards to guide teacher recruitment and deployment, which can lead to inexperienced teachers struggling in the classroom,” she said.
“As a result, classroom time is not used effectively or efficiently, which reduces the knowledge and skills that can be acquired in school.”
Levin noted that there is a lack of adequate spending on education, particularly at the primary and secondary school levels.
“Countries are not spending enough in terms of investment in capital expenditures, in terms of investment in education infrastructure…and it shows,” she said.
She added, “Currently Caribbean countries spend more per student than high income countries for tertiary education, but they spend less on primary and secondary education.”
Another significant concern was what Levin described as a two-tier system of secondary education “with students from higher income families entering well-resourced historically elite schools, and students with lower income families being served by the rest of the secondary school system, which is not delivering the needed competencies”.
Levin said it “serves as a sorting mechanism with lifelong consequences for students.”
Citing a success story in Ceará, Brazil, which saw vast improvements in its educational outcomes since 2005, Saavedra said that in Caribbean countries education needs to be a long-term priority across administrations.
“Ceará demonstrated that world class education is possible even in resource-constrained settings,” he said.
“The current education crisis can be solved. Education must be a top national priority.”
He said working with the private sector and international development partners is critical.
“Let’s take urgent action to ensure that every child in the Caribbean gets the education they deserve,” he said.
“There is no time to waste.”
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