The Commonwealth of Learning

Keynote presentation: The Honourable Mia Amor Mottley Minister of Education, Youth Affairs and Culture Barbados

EDUCATION IN ISLAND NATIONS AND GENDER ISSUES

Minister Mottley did not use a prepared speech.  She agreed to have her remarks transcribed from the videotape recording:       Biographical note

Thank you very much Mister Chairman, Ministers, Delegates, President of the Commonwealth of Learning, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to first thank the Commonwealth of Learning and to congratulate them on their 10^th Anniversary and the staging of this first Forum. I would like as well to thank the Minister of Education from Brunei Darussalam and indeed all of the other members of Government and people of this country for so graciously welcoming us and providing for us as they have during the course of this conference.

This morning I have been asked to address the issue of small islands states, open learning and women’s issues. But I’m sure that many of you will not be concerned if I change the topic slightly and speak to you on small island states, open learning and gender issues. Because the reality of the Commonwealth is that each of us has different problems while sometimes confronting common challenges and the various peculiarities that we face, must still be met by a forum such as this, rather than making assumptions that each of our problems is the same.

The issue of the future of small islands states is one that has become tremendously topical during the course of the last two years particularly within the forum of the Commonwealth. And that is because many of us have realised that there is an inherent vulnerability that attaches itself to small island states regardless of how well we have done as a country and as a people. And indeed the mounting of the special task force on small island states by the Commonwealth Secretariat to treat with the other international financial institutions and international agencies governing global conduct in international trade, has seen to it that this issue, that seeks to understand the vulnerability of small island states, is one that is placed on the forefront of the global agenda. The reality for many of us is simply that we have no protection against many challenges such as nature, such as the international economy. And that we regardless of how well we have ordered our business and prepared ourselves, are susceptible to major changes that can indeed put us back in some instances decades, because of shocks that we have no control over.

This places for us very peculiar considerations in terms of how we therefore seek to order our business. The major one, of course, is the development of a relationship with the rest of the countries in the globe that causes them to understand that while we do not yearn for the days of protectionism, again, we must have an understanding and an appreciation that our policies related to how you treat us as small island states must be governed not simply by a per capita income and our GDP, but indeed, an understanding of the extent of our vulnerability in the world.

We are happy, therefore, to know that the results of the small island states secretariat has in fact led to the establishment of a special task force by the World Bank and other institutions across the globe to come up with an index that seeks to trace the vulnerability of us small island states. But not in the context of a world that is rapidly changing – changing in terms of its economic structures, changing in terms of its international trading patterns, changing in terms of the technology that is made, indeed the realities of one country and the roles of another country. We have now to confront how we deal with those issues and how we prepare our people in making sure that we can maximise what we can from this situation and indeed provide a better life for our people.

We have, among small island states, to understand that the maximisation of the human resources, that each and every member of our population must now be educated to the maximum of his or her potential in order to be able to have a toe-hole in competing with the rest of the countries in the globe. We have also to understand that those precepts require of us a commitment to two basic premises that reflect how we live and how we govern our countries. Those premises of social justice and participatory democracy are in a commitment to the premises of social justice and participatory democracy, an understanding that if we simply seek to ensure universal access for education to provide each one with a sound education without reflecting those other premises in how we govern our societies, then we will not create the impetus or the encouragement for people to accept responsibility for their own learning and for their own participation in the societies.

The reality is that educational advancement is not only the responsibility of governments, but it is also the responsibility of the individual, the family and the community. And unless people can feel that what they are making their sacrifices for, in terms of getting an education, can lead to a better life for themselves, they are unlikely to make those sacrifices and to choose alternative powers that may in fact be deleterious to their own future but worst still to the future of their society and their country. We therefore see the provision of education to each of our citizens as merely an avenue by which governments must pursue the pursuits of social justice and participatory democracy, particularly in small island states were people do not have the room or the luxury to accommodate social upheaval or marginalisation of its people, simply because they do not have the geographical space from which to run and hide and where the rest of the society is not impacted. And if we understand that, we understand therefore that the avoidance of social upheaval and marginalisation of our people must remain paramount as an objective for small island states.

When we start from this premise, it therefore means that we must seek to ensure that each and every one of our citizens can provide for themselves and stop being a charge upon the state. A charge directly and a charge indirectly. The reality is that there is no better way for equipping one’s citizens than giving them the tools to provide for themselves. All of us are here because we understand the importance of equipping ourselves and providing for ourselves. And the days of ensuring that we have 30 to 40% of a population who can do so, with the state and families taking care of the other 60% are not a luxury that we can continue to enjoy. The reality is that that same vulnerability of which I spoke just now brings home the fact that we must equip each citizen with the tools to be able to provide for themselves and to re-order how they perceive their relationship to the society and to the country. How do we achieve this?

Many small island states complain of the cost of providing adequate education for all. And indeed the challenges today, on the eve of the 21^st century, are not simply to provide a place for each child, but to provide access while ensuring quality education. If not, we will end up with the same social upheaval and the same marginalisation of our young people of which I spoke just now.

The reality is that to take young people and to simply give them access to a place in a building and to place a teacher there, without ensuring that there is quality education, will create greater problems because somewhere along the line you heighten their awareness as to their entitlements but you fail to deliver and you create a level of apathy, or worst still violence and a feeling of being an exile in one’s own country. We, as governments, must understand that the cost of providing education therefore is not simply "the bricks and mortar" solution of providing a building and providing wages for a teacher but that there are so many other complex cost variables that go in to the costs of providing education for one child, that unless we face them, we may well be digging our own graves in the preparation of our children for their future.

We must confront the costs of proper resource materials. We must confront the cost of proper teacher training. We must confront the cost of proper and effective ways of assessment, because it is no sense a child going through 10 years of education and then they have no certificate from which they can gain currency to move on either to a job or further education. We must confront the cost of ensuring that those things that prevent them from learning are removed from them. Whether it is in the form of malnutrition or whether it is in the form of poverty preventing them from proper access to textbooks and basic materials or something as simple as transportation, the ability to get to school.

So that the costs that confront us in the provision of education today, if we are indeed to reorder our societies is far more complex than that which might have met our eyes 20–30 years ago and that which we may have been prepared to accept 20–30 years ago.

The purposes of education for us can no longer be simply to provide a social solution for training young people to live in a society alone and to take instructions well but indeed must now be to maximise the potential of each and every young person and that requires facing those complex cost variables to which I just referred. That therefore means that many of us who already are confronted with major cost for other areas of social expenditure, while at the same time confronted with demands to reorder how we develop our economies by providing the incentives that are necessary for the economic industries to prosper in order to provide a sustainable form of revenue for governments, that serious decisions have to be made. And those things which may have informed us as to how a government orders its public sector investment programme now have to change.

Traditionally, governments have been the sole providers of roads, and other infra-structural programmes, without reference to whether there are other alternatives that can meet the provision of these demands while freeing-up government expenditure for what surely must be the most critical demands on us today.

We in Barbados have determined that education is the most single important investment that we can make as a country. And it is for that reason that our government has just committed itself to a programme commonly known as Edutech 2000, but a programme which will in fact be the largest single public sector investment programme in the country over the next decade. And we will be investing some 200 million US$ on top of our existing budget of a 125 million US$ a year over the next five years. Because we recognise that even though we have a basically good system and one which has made us proud and has carried us safe thus far, that it is one that cannot sufficiently meet the challenges of a rapidly changing international economy and a rapidly changing global civilisation if we as a small island state are simply to remain with the path – or if we are to reach our dreams of being able to influence global civilisation in the 21^st century.

The reality is that the need for reform therefore confronts not only those whose systems may have been lagging behind for the last century, but those whose systems have done well. And we therefore find ourselves within the Commonwealth, regardless of our position to-date facing the challenge of education reform as an absolute necessity in the re-ordering of our societies to meet with challenges of the 21^st century.

It therefore means that we must find ways of reordering our public expenditure, but most importantly, we must determine that we have the political will, we must determine that we can create the legislative framework and we must determine that we can deal with policy variables that require our intervention in order to meet issues of inequity or issues of imbalance within our system, if we are to meet the outcomes of maximising the educational potential of each and every child. It means that there can be no common solution for the provision of education. It means that there must be a range of solutions that deals with the variables of how children develop and to what extent they can develop, and what are those barriers that prevent children from learning. It means that there must be consistent co-operation between ministries of health and ministries of education to deal with the physical reasons why children may not learn. It means that there must be a commitment to ensuring that where there are gender inequalities that we are capable of providing affirmative solutions to meet those gender inequalities. If not, we will end up with the same levels of social upheaval and marginalisation to which I referred earlier.

The reality is that many of us have had to confront the issue no more squarely of gender in equality in the context of social justice and participatory democracy. In the context of ensuring that our societies are capable of firing on all cylinders without having to stop and take care of a section of people who simply are not capable of driving the economy or driving the community further.

What does this mean in practical terms?

That the days of believing that girls can continue to remain at home and take care of home rather than being educated are days that must be over. The days that believe that we can simply fashion policies to compensate for girls in an educational system without reference to the needs of boys must also be over. The reality is that both genders require selective and sensitive treatment. We in the Caribbean have been facing a unique phenomenon that perhaps more reflects the fate of a developed country. And that is the marginalisation of young men, particularly young black men.

The reality for us has been that many of them remain disenchanted and feel exiled in their own countries because they do not see how they have a future and what stake is it there for them to build their country and for them to benefit. We have had therefore over the last 10–15 years, a policy of affirmative action for boys at the level of transfer from primary to secondary schools, largely because we recognise that without that policy of affirmative action we would be denying at least 35 to 40% of our boys access from schools that offer the best types of education and indeed we would be creating villages, within schools, of persons who believe that their only faith is to under perform in life.

We have also had to come to grips with the fact that the methods of teaching related only to chalk and talking can no longer, very often, hold the attention and motivate these young boys largely because their existence outside of school which far outnumbers their time in school in terms of absolute numbers brings them into contact with a world that excites all of their others senses, that grips their imagination and then we seek to believe that what is their most valuable form of instruction can come in a classroom with four walls and a chalkboard, a piece of chalk and a teacher!

We have therefore to understand that the challenges for reform relate not only to being able to introduce issues of access and to meet them successfully, but indeed also to meet the issues of quality and enhancing the learning experience for many of our young people. We recognise, however, at the same time, that the issue of access for girls remains a problem in many other countries across the world. But I say only to you, that it is our firm conviction that unless you meet those questions of access at the same time with dealing with issues of quality then you are doing no better than moving and herding children through an open sewer for a faith that is worse than if they had never gone there before.

This brings us therefore to the issue of how do we meet the challenge of providing education for all of these people? How do we meet the challenge of ensuring that our persons within our societies receive levels of education commensurate with their ability while at the same time dealing with issues of social justice and participatory democracy? The reality is that for some of us the issues of access can only be met by adjusting the normal equation of education, pupil and teacher, textbooks, classroom, and that we need to find ways of amplification, ways of transmitting our message, ways of reducing the numbers of teachers. And open learning and distance education has the perfect dynamics in order to meet that equation.

But distance education in and of itself is not sufficient unless coupled with a total appreciation of how we use technology as a tool. Technology in terms of both information and communications technology. The reality remains that for us as small island states, there is an attractiveness about following distance education and the introduction of technology. For distance education, issues such as finance, geography, the scarcity of the right level of trained professionals to teach, the geography that we may face in our countries and therefore the infrastructural difficulty of delivering access to each and every child in every community. All of those are reasons that may lead us to an inescapable conclusion that we need to use all of the modalities available to governments in the delivery of instruction to its students.

For some of us who have already successfully met the issue of access there are different criteria and different considerations. Many of us have met the issue of access because we have consolidated our expenditures as governments on primary and secondary education with limited access to tertiary education, as has been the experience of the Caribbean. But that we have now to ensure that our enrolment ratio from secondary to tertiary increases tremendously if we are going to meet the needs of building the middle management core that is needed to create both the human resource potential as well as the opportunities for entrepreneurial development in small- and medium-sized businesses to create the wealth to sustain the quality of life that we have achieved today.

It therefore means for many of us, who shudder at high escalating costs of the provision of university education in the region that we cannot simply look at traditional modes of tertiary education for enhancing the skills and competitiveness of our citizens at a tertiary level. We therefore must confront the challenge of using other modalities that can allow people to acquire skills after they leave secondary school on an ongoing basis according to their individual needs and the needs of the society and the economy as a whole.

It also has the additional benefits, of course, of allowing people to continue, in many instances, working and therefore increasing the productivity and the competitiveness of the country while at the same time learning when their work schedule accommodates it and therefore being able to continue to provide for themselves and for their family without providing them and placing them as a charge upon the state. So that the access to tertiary education through open learning has distinct advantages for small countries that have limited human resource basis to start with or whose human resource basis have been consolidated at the primary and the secondary levels but have been limited at the tertiary level simply because of access to the millions and millions of dollars that are required now simply to keep a university functioning.

But that is distance learning. The reality is that technology as I referred to information and communications technology has its own peculiar advantages for us as well. We have continued to believe as a people, that the best way for people to learn is to listen to a teacher in a classroom and to read a text book without recognising that for many people the capacity to learn through multimedia may not only provide greater motivation but may be far more effective in terms of the results in the learning experience.

We also have to determine that if we change how we teach children, sometimes we have to change what we teach because the reality of a small island state as well is that if you were going to maximise your human resources, it cannot only be maximised for an economic objective, but must be maximised for a national objective which means social cohesion and the building of the confidence that is necessary to interact in a globe that is being less kind to those who are not capable of taking care of themselves. So that requires a level of confidence building and a level of understanding who we are as a people.

That and many instances for many of us requires substantial curriculum reform for so many countries in the Caribbean. Ninety-five percent of us in the eastern Caribbean come from African origins and not one school in the eastern Caribbean dedicates itself to a course of African heritage studies until the last two years where we in Barbados and one or two other countries have just introduced it. Unless we understand who we are and where we have come from you cannot expect our children to have the confidence to move forward and build on what they have received as a legacy.

Equally we have, in the Caribbean, gained independence in the last 30 years, and we have spoken copiously about our freedoms and our rights, without adverting to the fact that no right is ever sustainable without responsibility and obligations. And those now must be reinforced by what we teach in our classroom, so that once we look at how we teach, and what we teach, the next step is to look at how we test what we teach. To believe that you can change the manner of teaching from a discourse between a teacher and a child and a textbook to multimedia, and simply go back to written forms of examination as a major form of assessment, means that we will continue to fool ourselves or that the levels of certification needed are only for those at the top end of the academic stream, because they are the only ones who need to get into a university or to a post-secondary training institution, means that we do not understand that the process of increasing productivity in a nation goes to having and reducing the level of error, the incidence of error every time a person hires somebody or every time a person seeks to place his or her skills opposite a task. And unless we have wider and more accurate moulds of assessing that child’s ability when he or she leaves school, whether it is for the position of a maid or a gardener, then we face the risk all the time of playing a lottery in terms of how we hire people and whether this is the correct person for the job at hand. Our schools simply do not provide enough information in respect of what are the abilities or inclinations of our children to enter the process of living in a world, in an economy that is dynamic. So that we need therefore to address issues of assessment if we are to be successful in that process. And finally, that assessment only means something if there are mechanisms for equivalency, if there are mechanisms for exchanging it in terms of other jurisdictions and other areas of activity.

So the currency of it, what I like to call the unsexy area of education, because they are the things that people don’t think of first hand. But they are the things that determine how effective one can be in labour economics in terms of ensuring that we have the right mix with the right skills that are needed to propel an economy forward. Those are all issues therefore that must be met in the area of normal education. And it is my submission to you that the utilisation of technology is the greatest productivity enhancement tool for us today, in meeting those objectives. But that the introduction of technology is not simply to make people computer literate, but it is to be able to provide them with a sound education. And then it is nothing more than a tool, a powerful tool, we may agree, but nothing more than a tool. But because it is a powerful tool it reinforces in us the requirement to ensure that issues of equity and issues of values are reinforced in our children, so that they too will understand how to use this tool as they proceed along life.

We therefore as governments have a number of variables that we must address in the provision of meeting the objectives of social justice and participatory democracy for our people. Those objectives simply mean that life must be better for you and for your children. That life must be capable of ensuring that each person in our society is capable of having a minimum decent standard of living and that they recognise that the opportunities are there for their advancement.

We must ensure that the concept of democracy is not for us "one man, one vote", but indeed that it reflects in us a determination and a will to share in the decision making process and to consult in the areas of activities that reflect on peoples’ lives and that influence peoples lives. And to those who yesterday determined that the lot of politicians was simply that of wanting to keep people ignorant in order to advance, they failed to recognise that the greatest possible power a politician can have is when he has the consent of those who follow him. Because they understand what is trying to be done simply because those that initiate the change have done so for the right reasons and in the right way. And we therefore must understand that to simply have a view that is jaded or that accepts all people as being — how shall I say this without being offensive — accepts all people as operating from a motive that is less than honourable, does not understand that that perspective means that you do not understand the dynamics of the human character and the diversity of people.

The reality is that there are good and bad of everything, that is the reality of our experience and our path along life. But for those who want to stand on the side and to criticise without recognising that the process of governance is not the responsibility of governments alone, but it is the responsibility of a population to ensure what is their future. And to that extent, the responsibility of education, while the lead is taken by governments, is the responsibility also of a society as a whole.

The process of building ourselves for the future is the responsibility of each and everyone of us. And we must also have the confidence not sometimes to feel as though we are under siege but to recognise that the future lies in our hands, to take those steps which are immediately available to us while having the patience to look for those steps that may become available to us. And when I say this, I refer specifically to those small island states that feel that their process in a bargaining situation between themselves and the international financial institutions is simply one where they must get the short end of the stick. Our experience has been different.

We in Barbados have had the distinct honour of simply saying to the international financial institutions and, in particular, to the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank that we will not accept a conditionality of charging tuition fees for our students at the tertiary level. But we believe that the single most important thing we can do as a government is to provide the environment within which each citizen can reach the maximum of his or her educational levels. And we simply will not charge tuition fees. That every child, regardless of his or her background, must feel that it is their right to attain that level of education that they set out to achieve. And that further if we speak about maximising the individual abilities of each child, then it means that we must implement programmes of diagnosis and remediation. And to that extent, you cannot speak to us simply in terms of bold numbers of pupil/teacher ratios.

And that we have rejected the conditionalities, therefore, both of the cost-sharing at the tertiary level as well as pupil/teacher enrollment ratios as a bold index of whether we are advanced in our educational system or not, and I am happy to report that having stood our ground, can remove those conditionalities were removed and that furthermore the major project to which I adverted earlier "The education sector enhancement programme" Edutech 2000, that we have secured US$M85 from the IADB and over US$M33 from the CDB without a single policy conditionality in education because we held ground, that we as a sovereign country, know best what are the policy determinants that are necessary for our educational system to meet the national objectives that we have set as a people and from which we have received a mandate from those who have elected us. And I believe that the attitudes which we display in our relationships, therefore, with the international financial institutions from whom we must continue to rely occasionally on development and finance, will very much determine what we get. How we go in, and behave and what we ask for will determine what we walk away with at the end of the day.

So that, ladies and gentlemen, the issues confronting small island states in my view reflect almost entirely on the way in which we are prepared to reorder our business, to meet the objectives of ensuring that no citizen has the grouse or feeling that they are marginalised in their own society or that they become a charge on the society because of their inability to provide for themselves. Education is simply the most powerful tool by which we can ensure that each citizen feels and has that vested stake in the society in which they are born, in which they choose to continue to live in.

It is up to us whether we want to ensure that we have the political will or that we are prepared to reorder our public sector investment programmes and our financial resources to meet that objective. And that we are prepared to make the sacrifices by ensuring that the environment which those children will move into as adults, is one that is reflective of opportunity, of transparency and of equity. Because if it is not, they will not feel the motivation or want to sacrifice what is necessary for them to reach there. And therefore one cannot look at education purely in a myoptic sense or in a sectorial sense without looking at one’s national objectives, without looking at one’s national priorities, and without determining where you want to take your people, how you want to take them there and by what means they will reach there.

I thank you ladies and gentlemen.

The Honourable Mia Amor Mottley
Minister of Education, Youth Affairs and Culture
Barbados

BRUNEI, 5 March 1999

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