Monitoring Educational Performance in the Caribbean

This study represents a first attempt of providing a comprehensive quantification of educational outcomes in the Caribbean region. Its main objectives are: (a) to define a set of operationally relevant education indicators; (b) to provide a database of comparable education indicators in Caribbean countries where data is available, namely Belize, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines and Trinidad and Tobago and (c) to propose methods on how the common set of indicators can be used for analyses of the education sectors. This exercise is all the more important within the framework of the current Education For All (EFA) and Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) initiatives which require the identification and monitoring of relevant indicators to establish where the countries stand in relation to the target of universal primary education. After a systematic review of educational indicators in coverage, efficiency and quality which leads to specific recommendations on the type of indicator relevant to operational diagnostics of the education sectors, the study provides a detailed review of the Caribbean status in producing education indicators and demonstrates how a new database can be used to depict where the education sectors stand. Building on these methods and findings, its final section presents a set of specific recommendations to the Caribbean countries on how to improve the diagnostics of their education sectors.