• To continue and complete the reform process by 2010.
• To sustain the reform process over the next ten years.
• To ensure a dynamic element to the reform process allowing it to make adjustments respond to unanticipated developments and unplanned outcomes.
• To coordinate the actions of member states and the stakeholders engaged in implementing the reforms.

General Philosophy

Education reform is as much a process as a set of planned outcomes. No reform strategy can fully anticipate and plan in every detail all the needed educational responses demanded over the next ten years. This is because insufficient knowledge of many aspects of education generally, and in the OECS, limited insight into the operation of critical variables and future developments that cannot now be anticipated. Nor can any reform strategy forecast most of the unintended consequences of planned change. In addition, not all of the elements of various reforms may be agreed on from the very onset. There will be reservations on some elements for a variety of reasons. These factors pose considerable problems for developing a detailed implementation plan for reforming the education systems of the sub-region.

Limited foresight, unresolved issues, insufficient knowledge and unplanned developments should not, however, forestall action. At the same time, prudence requires that the reform strategy possesses the capacity to benefit from hindsight, new knowledge, future agreements and fresh insight. An alternative to a detailed implementation plan is the proposal of a framework for the reform process and a mechanism to ensure that the process is carried out within this framework.

The same broad process that created the revised strategy points to the approach that needs to be adopted to implement it. The reform strategy, therefore, cannot be constituted solely of recommendations and prescriptions but also of mechanisms to maintain its dynamic character. A framework and the mechanisms that seek to ensure continuous review of goals, objectives, outcomes and achievements, which allow new components to be added and which promote ongoing consultation and partnership among the stakeholders in education in the sub-region are vital to the success of the entire reform exercise. The implementation of the reforms is not the sole responsibility or prerogative of governments, but also of teachers and their unions, parents and their organisations, principals of schools and colleges, non-governmental organisations involved in delivering education, the private sector in the form of small and big businesses, students and their councils and other organisations of civil society engaged in the educative process. The implementation of the reforms is the responsibility of the partners, the stakeholders, in the education enterprise.

Recognizing that education in the OECS has always benefited from partnership between OECS Governments and institutions on the one hand and regional and international agencies and regional bodies and associations on the other hand, the implementation of the reform strategies would require that continued use should be made, where appropriate, of existing capacities, skills and relationships with these partners.