“I Learn Best When…” Women and Girls in the Caribbean Share on Int. Day of Education

Reports Resource Document January 24, 2023

Each year on January 24th, the International Day of Education is commemorated in celebration of the role of education for peace and development. This year, the theme is, “to invest in people, prioritize education”. This commemoration is particularly significant for women and girls.

According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Education is a human right. The declaration, Article 26 states, “Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.”

This year for the International Day of Education, the Caribbean Women in Leadership (CIWiL) utilized their social media platforms to enquire from women and girls in the Caribbean on what constitutes an ideal learning environment for them. CIWiL launched an open-ended prompt and provided women and girls the opportunity to volunteer their responses to the prompt. The activity was anonymous, allowing free, open and unfiltered space for sharing. All the responses were collected and the main themes were analyzed.

The following reflects the themed responses of women and girls in the Caribbean, to the prompt, “I learn best when…”.

1. I Learn Best When I am in a Clean Environment

The majority of women and girls, at 32 percent, shared that a clean environment is most essential for their learning. Some expounded that the environment should reflect “peace”, “calm” “comfortability” and “focus”.

Research supports that in the Caribbean, the lack of basic utilities contributes to frequent disruptions in learning. The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) 2006 report revealed that one in five schools did not have drinking water, and two in five were not connected to sewage systems. Just over half had no telephone, and a third had an insufficient number of toilets. A more recent report of 2016 from the Caribbean teachers’ Unions recommended that education authorities pay more attention to health and safety conditions in their countries’ schools and classrooms, as teachers reported having been injured and fallen ill as a result of unsafe and unhealthy school environments.

Following the feedback from the women and girls who participated in CIWiL’s survey for the International Day of Education 2023, it is evident that the need for refurbished and clean environments for learning continues- whether learning occurs at a formal educational institution, at work or at home.

2. I Learn Best When I am Safe

A total of 20 percent of women and girls shared that safety was core to their effective learning. They commented that this encompassed “being in a safe space”, “feeling supported”, “having their views/opinions matter” and “being understood”.

Safety serves as both a basic human need and a basic human right. Yet, violence and instability at the wider society level continues to infiltrate into the educational systems. A recent report by UNICEF Eastern Caribbean revealed that 1 in 4 secondary school students in the Caribbean have experienced some form of bullying. Additionally, 40 percent of school-aged adolescents have been involved in physical altercations or fights.

Teachers also expressed that their safety is at risk. There have been numerous cases of teachers attempting to de-escalate an altercation or fight, which resulted in the teacher being brutally injured. Teachers have also been victims of verbal abuse, physical assaults, sexual harassment, social and cyber violence. Though this affects both male and female teachers, women are disproportionately affected due to the high percentage of women in teaching careers. The World Bank reports that in Latin America and the Caribbean, 58% of secondary school teaching staff are women. Further, in some Caribbean countries such as Trinidad and Tobago, St Lucia, Jamaica, Dominica, the Bahamas and Antigua and Barbuda, over 70 percent of the secondary school teaching staff are women.

Addressing violence within schools, providing effective security measures, facilitating training on conflict resolution and gender equity, are just some steps towards establishing a safe learning environment for women and girls.

3. I Learn Best When I have Resources

A total of 20 percent of women and girls shared that they learn best when they have access to resources. This was described as having “necessary materials to complete tasks”, “visual and auditory learning support”, and “access to an approachable lecturer”.

Data supports that schools in the Caribbean lack significant physical resources. According to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) 2006 report, “On average, 88 percent of schools lacked a science lab, 73 percent had no lunchroom, 65 percent lacked a computer room, 63 percent had no meeting facilities or staff offices, 40 percent lacked a library, and 35 percent had no sports facilities.”

More recent data revealed that the COVID-19 Pandemic intensified the resource gap as students were forced to rely on technological devices and technological skills to stay abreast with their online learning classes. This resulted in countless drop outs and declining academic performance. For example, in Guyana alone the Ministry of Education reported a 1,000 student dropout between the period 2020 to 2021.

Resources, being physical resources, such as infrastructure, technological devices, books, stationary, and human resources, such as teaching staff, remain crucial to the investment in education and learning.

4. I Learn Best When I can make Mistakes

16 percent of women and girls ranked the opportunity to make mistakes as integral to their learning. They expounded this as having the ability to “ask silly questions”, “explore”, “not feel pressured for an exam” and “feel encouraged”.

The need to re-think the Caribbean education system has been widely challenged. An article published on the Caribbean Examinations Council’s (CXC’s) website states that we need to redefine education because “Our education systems are no longer working”. After revealing the poor performance results of the 2009 CSEC examination, the article stated, “To compound the difficulty, to most of our young people – digital natives consigned to analog schools – school is simply boring and learning has no excitement. Chalk and talk no longer is able to keep the attention or focus the concentration of students whose personal lifestyles are increasingly multi-sensory, multi-tasking and short attention span dynamics. Our teacher preparation processes have not kept pace with these challenges and in too many countries an insufficient proportion of the teaching service is neither trained nor prepared to successfully deliver instruction to the new generation student in distinctly different conditions such as we face today.”

There is a continued call for the revisiting of teaching styles, teaching methods, curricula and the increased integration of modern technology in learning processes.

5. I Learn Best When I am in Good Holistic Health

12 percent of women and girls attributed their optimum learning to being in good health. They shared that being “stress free”, “whole” and “well rested” were essential to their learning.

This is keeping with theories that recognise physiological needs and safety needs (including health) are fundamental human needs to achieving higher tiered needs such as self-actualization (the desire to be the best that one can be). This theory solidifies that in effort to achieve academic excellence which can be often driven by the desire for lifelong success, the lower tier need of health must be fulfilled.

In the Caribbean, various ministries have sought to integrate aspects of health and wellness into school programmes. This is especially seen in the sports arena with after-school sporting clubs and programmes. The school feeding programme, in countries such as Antigua and Barbuda, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and St. Lucia, is also significant in ensuring that students of primary and secondary schools are well nourished for their learning.

There continues to be room for improvement, however. One such area is the accessibility of emotional support programs in primary through tertiary schools, and in vocational institutions. This encompasses initiatives such as counseling and therapy, anger management training, and emotional awareness programmes.

Conclusion

The Caribbean has performed remarkably well in terms of its literacy rates. According to the UNESCO Institute of Statistics Global Database (2021), in the Caribbean and Latin America, young women aged 15 to 24 years achieved a literacy rate of 99.4 percent and young men of the same age group achieved 99.2 percent. This ranks the region as having the second highest youth literacy rates in the world, after Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

Though literacy rates measure one’s ability to read and write, there are more factors which contribute to quality education. According to the measures for the Sustainable Development Goal 4, achieving quality education encompasses affordability of learning, elimination of gender disparities, promotion of skills needed to promote sustainable development, increased number of scholarship opportunities, strengthening of relevant skills for employability and entrepreneurship, literacy and numeracy, and the building and upgrading of educational facilities that are child, disability and gender sensitive. All governments, the international community and key stakeholders must therefore stand by their commitment to investing in and prioritizing education in effort to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. It is time to translate commitments into action as time accelerates to the UN’s global 2030 Agenda benchmark.

At a regional level, it is evident that much work needs to be done in the region to ensure that women and girls of all ages, socio-economic backgrounds, and ability can access a quality education. This was especially revealed in the responses shared by women and girls in the Caribbean who participated in CIWiL’s voluntary survey for the International Day of Education and in the supporting data presented.

CIWiL remains committed to supporting the full and equal participation of women and girls in all spaces, including in political leadership. Access to a quality education for lifelong learning plays an essential role in fulfilling this. We encourage all Governments, NGOs and private sector to continue prioritizing the access of education for all women and girls in the Caribbean.