This book reviews current education and skills training options in the Eastern Caribbean and asks whether the prevailing education policies adequately prepare youth for the global economy. It provides in-depth analysis and relevant international cutting-edge practices to guide policymakers, educators and private sector leaders in fostering a creative, productive and well-paid workforce. Specifically, it makes the case for why the OECS education and training systems need to be more responsive to changing labor market demands in the region, and discusses how this could be achieved, taking into c.

This book brings together leading scholars of Caribbean education from around the world. Schooling continues to hold a special place both as a means to achieve social mobility and as a mechanism for supporting the economy of Caribbean nations. In this book, the Caribbean includes the Greater and Lesser Antilles. The Greater Antilles is made up of the five larger islands (and six countries) of the northern Caribbean, including the Cayman Islands, Cuba, Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), Puerto Rico, and Jamaica. The Lesser Antilles includes the Windward and Leeward Islands which are inclusive of Barbados, St. Vincent, Trinidad and Tobago along with several other islands. Each chapter provides a unique perspective on the various social and cultural issues that define Caribbean education and schooling. The Handbook on Caribbean Education fills a void in the literature and documents the important research being done throughout the Caribbean. Creating a space where Caribbean voices are a part of “international” discussions about 21st century global matters and concerns is an important contribution of this work.

Commonwealth scholarships began in 1959. They have since moved over 30,000 people across borders, launching them into influence as politicians, poets, painters, professors – and the rest. Their stories illuminate the sociology and politics of higher education, of the Commonwealth, and of its member countries: they include the last scholar before apartheid took South Africa out of the Commonwealth, who became a high court judge, and the first after it came back, now a vice-chancellor. The second edition of this book, revised and updated since it was first published to mark the scholarships’ jubilee, sets out the narrative of the scholarship plan from its unlikely conception in a Commonwealth trade conference to its survival in the changed world of 2015. This book looks at the people who selected scholars, from the Lord Chamberlain as a break from censoring plays in the 1960s to the daughter of a pig farmer in the 2000s, and at the lives of the scholars and former scholars themselves. By asking who was selected, how, and why, it examines the policies of countries offering scholarships and those receiving them, looks at their role within the universities of Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, discusses their experience as they studied abroad, and assesses their long-term impact. Three themes stand out. First, scholarship policy has been shaped by the interplay of national politics and education. Second, the world’s four million cross-border university students are themselves now big business and the stuff of international politics; the Commonwealth record offers a microcosm of their experience. Third, the lives and achievements of former scholars answer the policy question: was investing in scholarships a good way of spending public money?

This book argues for the particular challenges of education in small states, and for the need to examine the impact of changing global contexts, to document the changing nature and significance of recent and contemporary education policy priorities, and to advance the case for new and strengthened initiatives for education in small states.