Objectives
- 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. |
