Minister of Education, Science and Technology Jerome Fitzgerald stated yesterday that raising The Bahamas' 17 percent tertiary education rate is "critical", arguing that the Ministry of Education needs to address the remarkably low rate at the source by better identifying students' potential learning challenges at an early age.
Fitzgerald told Guardian Business that the ministry will focus its efforts on improving the country's current 50 percent high school graduation rate over the next decade in order to increase the pool of students eligible for tertiary level programs.
"From an educational standpoint, there's a lot more that needs to be done. I am very concerned that 50 percent of students don't make the academic requirements to graduate from the public school system. That has been like that now for about 15 years and we are doing everything to set up a structure now to address that really for the first time.
"Our focus is going to be to improve that graduation rate over the next 10 to 15 years, which will be expanded upon in the government's Shared Vision for Education 2030, which the government hopes to release soon," he said.
Director of Economic Development and Planning Dr. Nicola Virgil-Rolle - who is piloting that new department in the Office of the Prime Minister - revealed the startling statistic last week as part of the early results from National Development Plan (NDP) studies. While Virgil-Rolle acknowledged that the figure does not reflect the relative wealth of The Bahamas, she said that she is far more concerned with the process of rectifying the problem than the number itself.
Fitzgerald noted that the NDP research team is still looking at comparisons between the national tertiary education rate and those of similar developing states, but said the current rate indicates the need for greater monitoring and guidance of students in the formative years of their education.
"We are setting up now in the public school system what we consider clusters or career paths, where students will be clearly on a path to graduation in an area of interest to them," he said, noting that the Ministry of Education had conducted an analysis of students entering the first grade to identify learning disabilities or challenges for the first time last year.
In addition to encouraging more students to pursue tertiary education, Fitzgerald said the ministry has grown "more comfortable" with the institution of the National Standardized High School Diploma.
"As soon as we detect that there's something that needs special intervention for our kid, we're going to try to address it early, and we feel that that will help the child through the education process. Anytime along the way where we see that there is a challenge, we're setting up a structure now to intervene, so that at the end of the day we really close the gaps that have continued to be in place where we see 50 percent of our kids not graduating.
"We are very confident that at the end of the day we will see the tertiary percentages increase, but it has to be sustained, it has to be focused. And we have to hold everybody accountable up and down the system in order for us to have the results we are looking for. That is critical for us," Fitzgerald said.
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