Caribbean Student Voices and Educational Inclusion

Exploring the Effectiveness of Policy Through Pupil Consultation

Stacey Blackman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000579819
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Comparative Education

Foregrounding the perspectives of students from Barbados and St. Vincent, this book offers valuable insight into the implementation and effectiveness of international policies designed to improve educational inclusion in the Caribbean.

Drawing on pupil participatory research conducted with adolescents in disadvantaged and high-achieving schools, the text reveals differences in how international policies are reflected in schools, highlighting the role of student and school leadership, community building in and outside of schools, and transformative teacher pedagogy in achieving educational equity. Situating pupil participation and student consultation in its theoretical and policy context in the Caribbean, the author examines the findings on educational inclusion and their implications for policy development in order to propose a new model to boost pupil consultation and increase academic inclusion and engagement.

Juxtaposing students' voices from a variety of socioeconomic, cultural, disability, and ethnic backgrounds, Caribbean Student Voices and Educational Inclusion is a great companion reader for educators, policymakers, and researchers undertaking work on inclusive education in developed and developing nations.

1 Equity in Education in the Caribbean Realities and Dilemmas

DOI: 10.4324/9781003020561-1

Understanding the Broader Equity and Inclusive Education Agenda

The United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has been a staunch advocate of a rights-based approach to education worldwide and in developing countries. Central to this agenda is the concepts of equity and inclusion designed to address educational inequality worldwide. According to UNESCO, equity in education is about fairness and a concern that teachers and schools are making sure that every learner matters equally in classrooms (UNESCO, 2017). Inclusion is defined as a philosophy, policy, and process that helps overcome barriers to access and participation of all students in their learning regardless of their diversity (UNESCO, 2017).

The abovementioned definition of inclusion implies that it is necessary to understand how young people with and without disabilities participate in schools. Therefore, it is imperative to consult Caribbean students about education inclusion and hear their voices if we are to understand the realities that confront them in school. For example, are schools fully inclusive of all students? And, what academic and social barriers do students experience in Caribbean schools? This research will present the Vincentian and Barbadian contexts as case studies to shed light on the qualitative experiences of young people with and without disabilities at selected secondary schools in these islands. In particular, how students experience inclusion or exclusion in their school environments will be examined through listening to their voices.

Before taking a substantive look at what Caribbean students say about the policy of education inclusion, it is essential to understand something about the broader realities and dilemmas that face education systems in the region with achieving this type of reform. Therefore, the next section of this chapter is dedicated to outlining the historical, socio-cultural, and economic realities that impact educational inclusion.

Caribbean Realities Influencing the Equity and Inclusive Education Discourse

According to UNESCO (2017), the concepts of equity and inclusion are enshrined in both binding and non-binding instruments. At the heart of the Education for All movement, Sustainable Development Goals (SDG4) and Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are access to basic quality education for all children, youth, and adults. The most recent Education 2030 Framework for Action adopts a lifespan view of education. According to UNESCO, the 2030 Action Framework addresses marginalization, exclusion, and inequalities that arise from a lack of access to, poor participation in the learning processes, and gender disparities across educational contexts.

According to UNESCO, the most vulnerable and at-risk persons to experience exclusion include students with disabilities, poor students, students from ethnic and linguistic minorities, and indigenous tribes. Unfortunately, the above has proven to be more elusive to implement in schools in developing nations. In particular, the practical implementation of ensuring that all children matter equally in classrooms remains constrained due to a lack of finances, resources, and the maintenance of traditional postcolonial ideologies, practices, and structures in education. Blackman et al. (2019a) argue that many British Caribbean education systems still maintain a colonial structure. As a result, many students find access to, participation in, and navigation of schooling a challenge. The risk of marginalization due to attrition and exclusion remains a concern for educators (Blackman et al., 2019a).

Historical Realities

Historically, the islands of the British West Indies share a common heritage of slavery and colonialism. The powerful influence of colonialism on education in the English-speaking Caribbean is captured in research by Brissett (2019); Miller & Munroe (2014) in Jamaica; Blackman (2017a) and Welch (2014) in Barbados; Carrington-Blaides & Conrad (2017) and Brown & Lavia (2013) in Trinidad and Tobago; Misir (2014) in Guyana; Esnard (2014) in St. Lucia; and Westfield (2012) in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Some of the common trends in the historical development of education document gender inequality, and largely exclusionary practices. A complete discussion of the influence of colonialism on the education system in the Caribbean is beyond the scope of this chapter. However, it is appropriate that some critical points of convergence are articulated to foreground and assist with understanding the current realities that confront educational equity and inclusion in the English-speaking Caribbean. There is general agreement among Caribbean scholars that educational opportunities remained virtually non-existent for enslaved populations in the pre-emancipation period before signing the 1834 Emancipation Act. While the primary aim of the planters was to maintain their labor force, they nevertheless extended educational opportunities to those slaves whose jobs required basic literacy (Welch, 2014). In the case of white children and boys of the plantocracy, they were educated either in England or by private tutors in some islands like Barbados, Jamaica, and St. Vincent (Blackman, 2017a; Brissett, 2019; Welch, 2014; Westfield, 2012). Welch (2014) contends that poorer whites attended local private schools or foundation schools maintained by charitable donations in Barbados. The same observation is made by Westfield (2012) in the Eastern Caribbean island of St. Vincent. According to Welch (2014), free blacks and mulattoes (the offspring of a white father/mother and a black father/mother) only accessed education “as we approach the post-emancipation period … [with] the introduction of the so-styled Charity School in Bridgetown, the capital city, in 1818” (Welch, 2014, p. 65). Brissett’s (2019) writing on Jamaica notes a similar historical trajectory regarding educational opportunities in the pre-emancipation period for enslaved blacks. His postcolonial analysis of the Jamaican context for the pre-emancipation period is instructive because it shows how the education discourse became polarized along the lines of race, color, and class. He notes that

Thus slavery and colonialism set the stage for the grounds on which educational battles would be fought, primarily along the lines of race, colour and class … other marginalised groups, such as people with disabilities, were largely invisible in this struggle.

(Brissett, 2019, p. 22)

A reasonable observation is that exclusion rather than inclusion was the order of the day and that limited access to and provision of education opportunities maintained a state of inequality.

As with the pre-emancipation period, the discourse on the development of equitable and inclusive education is similar across other islands in the English-speaking Caribbean. For example, in Barbados, St. Vincent, and Jamaica, access to educational opportunities proliferated after 1834 under a charity model that can be linked directly to the leadership of religious organizations, in other words, the church. Blackman et al. (2019a), Brissett (2019), Welch (2014), and Westfield (2012) document the role of the church in educating the newly freed black population. According to Welch (2014), Barbados is a prime example of the role played by the church in education. He states that “the Church [was] the primary agency for the introduction of mass education in the closing years of enslavement, and the first decades of emancipation” (Welch, 2014, p. 67). Churches established primary and secondary schools that still exist and bear their names in some Caribbean islands today. In Barbados, as in other islands, the dominant religious groups who were actively involved in the education of freed blacks and colored were the Quakers since the 1600s, the church of England in both the pre- and post-emancipation period, the Moravian, Methodist (Wesleyan), and Baptist churches (Welch, 2014). On the island of St. Vincent, Westfield (2012) adds the influence of the Roman Catholic school on the early development of two schools, namely, the St. Vincent Girls’ High School and Boys’ Grammar School. These schools still bear the same names today on this island.

Both Brissett (2019) and Welch (2014) note that the funding for education in the post-emancipation period was done through the Negro Education Grant. This grant allotted a sum of £235,000 (Brissett, 2019) to provide school buildings, rather than the payment of school fees which would have provided access to an education by easing the financial burden of schooling. Welch (2014) argues that

By and large, funding for education represented a grudging acceptance that there was some need for basic numeracy and literacy among the labouring classes if the landed aristocracy was going to affect any efficiencies in production… . While the total expenditure on education amounted to some £3, 678 in 1845, the legislature had only voted some £750 for public education, with the remainder coming from the parochial coffers and from endowments and bequest… . The policy emphases of the local legislature more than likely reflected the view that formal education was wasted on the working class … who could not hope to rise above their class position.

(Welch, 2014, p. 69)

Moreover, racism was endemic (Welch, 2014), and this also served to maintain educational inequality among blacks from the lower echelons of Caribbean society. Welch argued that the local legislature determined what levels of education could be accessed by each person in each social stratum. Primary and elementary education would cater to the broad bottom layer of society. At the same time, those who showed more intellectual promise from the white and colored classes would access secondary education. Two critical observations are made by Brissett (2019) in his postcolonial analysis; first, that for the most part, the colonial period reinforced practices that were antithetical to the equity and inclusive education agenda. Second, that “people with disabilities … were invisible to the extent that published records and literature on their status as it relates to education is largely absent in historical records” (Brissett, 2019, p. 23). This finding is also true for the island of St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

In today’s twenty-first-century discourse, these practices remain at variance with the more modern notions of inclusion espoused in international frameworks, conventions, and treaties. Although this is so, there are still very powerful reminders in education that the vestiges of colonialism still weigh heavily on the structures and organization of the education system in the English-speaking Caribbean. The reality is that education exclusion is still practiced in some jurisdictions in the form of selective secondary schooling practices (Pilgrim & Hornby, 2019). Students remain at risk for dropping out (Knight, 2019) and the marginalization of poor students in national assessment practices continues (De lisle, 2019).

Pilgrim and Hornby (2019), writing on the Barbados education system, observed that inherent contradictions exist at the transition between primary and secondary education in many English-s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Author Biography
• Preface
• 1 Equity in Education in the Caribbean: Realities and Dilemmas
• 2 Student Voices About Equity in Education: Some International and Caribbean Findings
• 3 Establishing the Policy and Research Framework for Consulting Caribbean Students About Education Inclusion
• 4 Consulting Caribbean Students About Academic Inclusion in Barbados and St. Vincent
• 5 Consulting Caribbean Students About Social Inclusion in Barbados and St. Vincent
• 6 Education Inclusion and Policy Development: Moving Toward Equity in Education in the Caribbean
• Index