Oslo, June 15, 2016 -- Today the Board of Directors of the Global Partnership for Education approved a US$2 million grant to support education in the four Caribbean island states of Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
The grant will focus on improving the overall quality of education through teacher training and better assessment of student learning outcomes.
“Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines are new partners of the Global Partnership for Education and are committed to an equitable quality education for their children,” said Alice Albright, Chief Executive Officer of the Global Partnership for Education Secretariat. “The GPE grant will build on previous progress and further strengthen the overall education systems in these four countries.”
“The OECS Commission welcomes this timely injection of GPE grant funds to support the implementation of priority education initiatives in Member States,” said Marcellus Albertin, Head of the Education Development Management Unit, OECS Commission. “We remain committed to collaborating with our partners to ensure that the new regional strategy realizes the vision of success for every learner.”
The four island states joined the Global Partnership for Education in April 2016 based on the regional OECS Education Sector Strategy (OESS) 2012 - 2021. The countries have made important gains in education over the past several years.
The four states have already achieved universal primary education and gender parity in primary education. Efforts to achieve universal secondary education are underway with a small gender disparity against boys being addressed.
The declining participation of boys at the upper secondary and tertiary levels is of concern along with children from lower economic backgrounds performing poorly at school, repeat grades and drop out before completing secondary level which increases the chances of unemployment and continues the cycle of poverty.
Improving learning outcomes remains the biggest challenge for the four states as students complete secondary schooling with insufficient formal qualifications to proceed to the next level of education, particularly in literacy, mathematics, science and technology. This situation is partly caused by the poor student performance at the primary level. The 2010 grade 4 literacy and mathematics tests showed that about 50 percent of grade 4 students had not achieved mastery at their grade level.
These OECS strategy ‘Every Learner Succeeds’ upon which the GPE grant is based addresses these challenges through a holistic approach aiming at supporting school leaders, teachers and students adequately starting with early childhood development through to tertiary and continuing education.
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Media contacts:
At the OESC in Castries, Saint Lucia: Ramon Peachy: rpeachey@oecs.org
At GPE in Washington, D.C.: Alexandra Humme, ahumme@globalpartnership.org