News

Education and Training Critical to Development

15 July 2021

“The problem is that the education system that (colonisers) gave us was set in the British reform of [the] 1940s, which is that you only educate the top 30, 40 percent to the maximum of their ability, and the rest will find their way as they go along. And that is what we’re confronting now, having to deconstruct, but it takes money to deconstruct it. And if you want to create schools of excellence in every area, you’ve got to be able to find the money to do so,” she said.
 
Prime Minister Mottley, who was joined by renowned Professor of Economics, Jeffrey Sachs, added that the reintroduction of payment of state-funded tuition fees for Barbadian students enrolled at The University of the West Indies costs the government approximately $145 million annually, but it is a necessary investment in the island’s youth.
 
“We have a national compact that on this island we need to make as many people reach as high a limit as they can educationally, because that is what is going to propel development for us.
 
“And I know that Sir Arthur Lewis was consumed by the unlimited supply of labour, but for us it really needs to be the supply of rare labour. Because it is with rare skills that we are going to be able to push the value of what our people get paid, as opposed to keeping them at the bottom of the gig economy that is so much a part of today’s world,” she noted, adding that the challenges of delivering education reform and other social services have been further compounded by the threats posed by climate change and the global pandemic.
 
“We’re trying to claim our future by being able to change that trajectory of educational reform but it costs money. And if you have to be spending money fighting storms, fighting droughts, fighting all of these other things, then you don’t have the fiscal space to do that which you ought to be doing in terms of education and health care, and community development and the other things.”
 
The prime Minister stated that The University of the West Indies will have a critical role to play in the area of research as Barbados seeks to explore economic opportunities in renewable energy and medicinal cannabis.
 
In that regard, she believes a combination of knowledge and ownership, coupled with training and education will help small island states get to the next level of their development
 
“I don’t know how we are going to get out of this moment without a dedicated 10 to 15 years of emphasis on education and training. And it’s not just for the Haiti’s of this world for which it is absolutely patently obvious, but it is for the countries like us who appear to have done well, but for whom there is still a bridge to cross if we are going to literally marry what we have to transform and do in terms of the digital economy, but at the same time the ethics that’s necessary to root training and development in this world,” the prime minister said. 
 

Return to all news