the Caribbean environment. In line with recommendations of the aforementioned 1954 and 1955 Conferences dealing with education, the Secretariat has devoted itself to studying instructional materials produced in the Caribbean territories and elsewhere in fields where there is a dearth of textbooks, with a view to adapting or translating them for use in various Caribbean territories. For example, it translated into English and French and distributed for adult education purposes several publications on nutrition produced in Puerto Rico. It was also engaged in 1958-59 in producing and distributing, in cooperation with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, a series of home economics booklets related to the Caribbean environment for use in schools and adult education extension programs, as well as a group of health education booklets known as the "Healthy Living Series" designed for the same use, in cooperation with the World Health Organization and the Government of Barbados. The latter series was being prepared in large easy-to-read type in English, French, and Dutch. In 1958-59 the Secretariat was also compiling a list of instructional materials with Caribbean relevance for use in schools and in adult education.

It was noted in a Commission publication early in 1959 that there is now a considerable amount of instructional material related to the Caribbean in use in schools, and to a lesser extent in adult education, in British and Netherlands territories. Materials for use in the schools are chiefly in reading, geography, history, and arithmetic. Nevertheless, it was observed that much remains to be done in many aspects of this work. In this connection, the Commission-sponsored Conference of Government Information Officers held in Surinam in March 1959 recommended the preparation of a geography textbook for the Caribbean as a whole, and the Commission Secretariat as a preliminary step requested governments to supply information on geography textbooks in use in elementary schools in the area."

In 1959 with the impending demise of the Caribbean Commission as organized, the future of regionwide consultation and cooperation in educational matters among the Caribbean areas retaining their affiliations with outside powers appeared to depend upon the materialization of the projected plans for its successor organization and on whether and how they would decide to use it in such matters.

7 Commission activities in the matter of instructional material related to the Caribbean is discussed in V. O. Alcala, Research Secretary, Caribbean Commission, "Instructional Material for Healthy Living," The Caribbean, 13: 34–35, 44, February 1959.

Part II

British Affiliated Areas

CHAPTER III

Governmental Structure and Policies Affecting Education

T

HE MODERN PERIOD in education in the British Caribbean may be said to have begun about 1940. During the preceding hundred years or so, from the completion of the emancipation of the slaves in 1838, educational facilities had remained extremely limited, and substantial change or improvement was slow. There was no tradition of mass public education as the responsibility of the state, and education began largely as a function of religious bodies.

In the latter half of the 19th and the early 20th centuries the responsibility of the state in education gradually came to be recognized, and government education departments were established under the British Crown Colony system. As each territory acquired a substantial degree of home rule, cabinet level Ministers of Education responsible to territorial legislative bodies for educational policy were appointed. Execution of policy remained in the hands of a Director of Education or a Chief Education Officer and his staff in the respective territorial education departments. Since there was no central government for the area as a whole, each territorial government developed, in a sense, its own educational system, so that today it may be said there are as many different systems as there are individual territories. Despite variations, however, basic features and common problems gave a unity to education throughout the area. Everywhere government funds were provided for education in two ways-through the establishment of government schools, and through financial contributions to certain denominational and private schools which have become known as "grantaided" schools. Generally speaking and with exceptions in certain territories, governments have established and operated a higher percentage of elementary than secondary schools. In both categories, however, and particularly in secondary education, the percentage of grant-aided denominational schools remains quite substantial in most of the territories. In Trinidad and British Guiana with their diverse racial and cultural groupings these schools have included Hindu and Moslem institutions, as well as Catholic and various Protestant sectarian schools. In Jamaica there has been for over 50 years a legal prohibition on the addition of any church school to the list of grant-aided elementary schools.

Thus, insofar as grant-aided schools were concerned, education was accepted as a partnership between religious bodies and governments. The former supplied many of the school buildings and administered the day to day operation of the schools; and the latter gradually assumed more and more of the responsibility for financing school operation and construction costs (sometimes up to 100 percent), set the general pattern and framework of substantive and administrative policies and regulations, and provided for regular inspection and overall administration. It is for this reason and also because of the fact, particularly at the secondary level, of common examinations to measure achievement, that there is today no essential difference in programs and administration between government and aided schools in the same territory, and that for all practical purposes they may be regarded as parts of the same system.

A principal handicap to educational development in the British Caribbean, as has been mentioned with respect to the European affiliated areas generally, has long been the poverty of the region and the paucity of funds, public and private, for substantial educational development. Until 1940 the prevailing practice with respect to the financing of education reflected the British Government's view that social services for the benefit of the Caribbean territories should in the main be paid for out of the financial resources of the area. In these circumstances, progress in the early years of the 20th century was slow. Population grew, but in the main the same schools, some nearly a hundred years old, continued to accommodate pupils.2

Development and Welfare Organization

In 1940 the British Parliament, acting on the recommendation of the West Indies Royal Commission of 1938, enacted the first United Kingdom Colonial Development and Welfare Act to assist colonial areas financially in their social services and economic development, including education. Although the Act applied to British colonial territories as a whole, special provision was made for financial aid to the British West Indies. This enactment and subsequent similar legislation has had far-reaching effects, not only by reason of an immediate increase in funds available for the indicated purposes, but also because it was accompanied by the establishment of the West Indies Development and Welfare Organization with headquarters at

1 British Information Services. The West Indies: A Nation in the Making, p. 16.

2 For historical and general information on education in the British Caribbean Territories, see UNESCO, "British Caribbean Region" and the individual Territorial summaries which follow in World Survey of Education, II, Primary Education (Paris, 1958), p. 1175 ff.