So far we have established that it would be incorrect, and indeed grossly unfair not to recognise the considerable economic and social gains, which Caribbean countries in general have made in the 1980s and 1990s. In similar vein we have also established that it would be wrong and indeed a distortion of reality, if we failed to recognise that many of these gains are now under serious threat, as new challenges arise to replace the older ones, already successfully overcome. Therefore, to under-estimate the tremendous economic and social deficits and gaps that have emerged despite good progress, would have grave long-term consequences.
Gender
This week we continue with this discussion of the major social challenges that confront Caribbean societies. One of these challenges is in the area of gender. Women continue to suffer from severe social limitations within the Region. They face special problems of access to good reproductive health services. In the workplace, they face not only physical harassment, which is not legally recognised as a crime in several countries, but glass barriers that limit their upward mobility.
In all Caribbean countries the occupational structure of women in the labour force shows a strap bias toward low paid service and caring occupations. This is compounded with overall comparatively low rates of participation by women in the labour force. Surveys have also shown that at the household level, single parent female-headed households face special disadvantages, when compared to other households. These disadvantages that women face as a group do not end here. Together they represent a formidable challenge to further social development in the Region. They have also elicited strong reactions from women, who have now formed themselves into a number of civil organisations.
Community development
Community development is another area where many social challenges have also emerged. Not only is poverty itself very much community-based in the Region, but other growing social pathologies seem also to be community-based. These include crime, drugs, prostitution, and gang violence.
In the face of these circumstances, we nonetheless find that some countries have dismantled their formal structures of local/community governance or have reduced them to mere symbolic agencies! Nowhere do we find strong community-based governance that is adequately financed and resourced. Furthermore, among the agencies dealing with community issues, personnel skills are limited and institutional capacities woefully meager. Although "participation" has been formally recognised as important to progress in community development, these arrangements do not foster its growth. In most countries "outside leadership" stifles the growth of self-help and self-empowerment programmes.
Education
In the area of education, despite good expenditure ratios, high levels of literacy, and good gender equity when compared to other developing regions, serious challenges have also emerged. Throughout the Region, educational systems are plagued with staff shortages and related issues of pay and conditions of service. Migration continues to be a source of great haemorrhaging.
In the age of globalisation and the new demands this has placed on education, training, and skills, many experts believe that curricular reform in the Region ought to be a matter of the highest priority. While there have been some responses to this in a few countries, the concern remains that this may be all too little too late.
Meanwhile, issues of declining school quality have arisen in many quarters. While literacy levels are very high in the Region, the concern is that the level of school achievement is being steadily eroded. This is usually reflected in high non-completion and drop-out and repetition rates in schools. Eventually this also shows up in examination performances. Throughout the Region there are pressures to remedy this situation and to maintain and improve school quality, but these are likely to be costly in terms of human resources and finances.
Micro-level
Although the general ratios show good gender equity in education when compared to other developing regions, it is becoming clear that at the micro-level there are growing gender disparities in performance in schools. Generally, we find girls out-competing boys by a very wide margin in schools. Indeed this continues up the educational stream into tertiary level institutions. One consequence of this has been the growing social problems faced by young males who leave school with inadequate education and who fall into the growing category of "young males who neither work nor study". Many other social problems of youth are linked to this phenomenon.
Detailed surveys at the micro-level are also showing that there is uneven access to educational opportunities, despite formal mechanisms in place to prevent this. It is still generally true that it is harder for poor rural youth to enter the best schools in most countries, despite efforts aimed at preventing discrimination.
As the impact of globalisation is felt, increasingly it has come to be recognised that there are vital linkages to education, which needs to be addressed. One of these, from the student perspective, is to improve the linkage between education and education-related services, which include health, nutrition, and transportation. Another linkage can be viewed from the output end of the spectrum. That is, the need to build sustained linkages between education and research and the active pursuit of a "culture of excellence".
Many of the issues identified, support the urgency to modernize and streamline Ministries of Education in the Region, particularly in light of the central role they will have to play if these challenges are to be successfully met. At the base of solutions to these problems is the need for Ministries of Education to shift their paradigm to a more holistic vision of human resource development, to replace the traditional views of education, which continue to dominate their outlook.