30 Reasons why I love my Country: #2 Our Education System: The UN dubbed Education as a human right and 2015 has been earmarked as the reckoning point – universal access to education for all people. Our representation at this planned global education meeting 2015 will be purely symbolic as the people of St Kitts-Nevis have had access to free education for so long that this UN Declaration did not even create a ripple upon our shores. Additionally free secondary education has been our privilege for the past 44 years or so, and tertiary education sometime during the interim, that as we say in our local parlance “ even dog an all going high school” in St Kitts-Nevis. Annual reports in regional newspapers which show photos of children and parents all aglow with test results that determine whether or not they will be given the opportunity for secondary education, cause me to wince since we in St Kitts-Nevis struggle with the opposite - truancy; trying to keep our children in secondary school. The 2013 July editions of Jamaica Observer, Gleaner, Barbados Nation, Stabroek News, Guyana, just to name a few, all ran similar articles. The crux of their matter is that only selected children attend secondary school. Free secondary education is still new in Antigua & Barbuda - our friend next door, and it’s a political promise to many others in the Windward Islands. Perfect our education system isn’t; nothing ever is; BUT IT WORKS! It needs proverbial massaging regularly to straighten its kinks and twists as every other system does. Our teachers need more regular professional upgrades, our children need encouragement, some of the schools need structural and administrative upgrades and a thousand other flaws. But with an “automatic promotion” in a test of standard that simply determines your “starting point” in the secondary system this system has ranked us highly in literacy and functionality in all the global rankings. Resultantly, Kittitians and Nevisians can hold their own in any education system around the world and in any position we hold whether we are in the US, Canada, BVI, UK or USVI. We are second to none. Anyone who attends school regularly in St Kitts-Nevis, whether he/she has subject passes or not, can hold his own in any part of the world. We excel in their schools, universities, on their jobs, or wherever we find ourselves. Just give us a “squeeze in” in the door and we will excel. Thank God for our leaders of yesteryear. Thank God for men like Clarence Fitzroy Bryant who had the vision to enact these policies for free education for all in my beloved Federation. This is a legacy that we will proudly pass to the next generation. Kudos to our education system!! Shame on anyone who discredits it! Check the stats: Population 33,000 (St Kitts only): 6 secondary government schools and 2 private secondary schools, 17 primary government schools, 6 private primary schools, 1 Special Ed school, 4 Tertiary level Institutions, 10 Government Day Care Centres at $15 weekly per child.
Posted on: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 22:35:41 +0000
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