The Government of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, in keeping with its national development agenda, has initiated a process to build a seamless and sustainable education system. As referenced by (Ashton and Pujadas 2004), Seamlessness refers to the openness and responsiveness of various levels of education and training. Developing a pre-school to tertiary level seamless system necessitates the development of a long term perspective on human resource development and a radically new view of knowledge throughout our society.

The ECCE Division, operating within the administrative structure of the Ministry of Education, is charged with the leadership responsibility for achieving the seamless vision from ECCE to Primary. On the one hand, the ECCE Division is guided by the core Vision of Excellence in Education, The Ministry of Education Corporate Plan ( 2008-2012), The Education White Paper (1993-2003),the White Paper on the National Policy on ECCE – Standards for Regulatory Early Childhood Services and National Early Childhood Care and Education Curriculum Guide. Within the context of the core vision, the Corporate Plan has identified three Strategic Priorities:

a) Focus on Schools.

b) Change the Ministry.

c) Involve the Community.

On the other hand, building on the directional themes and the three Strategic Priorities of the Corporate Plan, the ECCE Division has developed a compatible Vision and Mission. The ECCE Vision is that quality education in a centre and community focused programme of early childhood development is to be achieved with improved access and equity to engage all children in the educational endeavour. In translating that Vision to Action, The Mission has incorporated these fundamental tenets:

a) Child-centred and quality curriculum.

b) Alliances and partnerships with the community.

c) Continuous professional development.

d) Involvement of parents.

From a practical perspective, this institutional strengthening initiative is significant and has far reaching consequences for the ECCE Division as it provides leadership to the integration of this economic, social and educational policy. The effective implementation of this initiative will, most likely, place added pressure on the potential Division's expanded role, as a coordinating and network centre. At the outset, it must be emphasized that the building of a team leadership culture within the ECCE Division is critical to the success of this initiative. As a result, serious consideration must be given to the implementation of the recommendations within the (Moore Report, 2010), particularly those that deal with leadership development and strategic thinking. 

The complexity of the relationship between care, early learning and primary education is a critical public education challenge. Moving forward will require ongoing collaboration, sustained financial and political support to ensure that trained staff, appropriate standards and facilities are developed and monitored. In a nutshell, collaboration, effective partnerships, political will and commitment become the hallmark of its successful implementation.

The words “collaboration”, “co-operation” and “partnership” appear frequently within the Report. They give direction to the fundamental principle of co-determination. The concept of co-determination suggests that, through effective collaboration among key stakeholders, ensuing plans will be based on mutual agreement and therefore more likely to be implemented. In this operational climate, dysfunctional relationships are replaced by effective leadership, transparency and compromise. To that end, it is hypothesized that the successful implementation of plans to achieve the goal of a smooth and seamless transition from ECCE to Primary will require the resolving of perceived differences on child readiness, within the context of a philosophy of child-centred pedagogy and a continuum of learning.

In the final analysis, the successful implementation of plans to achieve a seamless transition from ECCE to Primary will depend on the extent to which there is tangible commitment and support to the ECCE Division, so that it can provide effective and strategic leadership and management to these major challenges:

•Maintaining learning and care quality, building human resource capabilities and 

capacities and improving the learning, technological and facilities infrastructures;

•Developing synergistic and strategic partnership relationships with the Primary sector;

•Providing collaborative leadership to the development of a shared vision. Both the qualitative and quantitative evidence suggest that there are two options for addressing the concept of a seamless transition from ECCE to Primary: (i) continue to perpetuate the current system which, by design, is incongruent with the concept of seamlessness, or (ii) redesign the current system grounded in an early learning framework that is based on a continuum of learning competencies supported by a seamless curriculum.

Clearly, the economic, social and educational priorities are interdependent. We cannot have seamless access without reviewing the educational philosophy. We cannot have an inclusive society without “leveling the playing field” for all early learners; therefore, the status quo is not the answer. In addition, there is conclusive research evidence that suggests that the smooth and effective transition from ECCE to Primary is a fundamental requirement for the start of a successful educational experience. As Logie (1997) so aptly states, placing early childhood at the forefront of the seamless reform ensures that children will start primary school with more advantages and more equal opportunities.

There is growing concern worldwide about the level of achievement of boys. There is such research published on the gender gap in educational achievement in which girls seem to be outperforming boys. It was against this backdrop that this consultancy was conducted.

The overall purpose of the consultancy was interpreted to be the generation of strategies to correct the perceived underperformance of boys in the school system in Trinidad and Tobago, particularly at the primary level. Such strategies were to be arrived at after certain preliminary work had been undertaken, viz:

• A review of pertinent literature and pertinent government policy documents

• A statistical analysis of the performance of boys throughout the primary, secondary and tertiary levels, with information on the early childhood sector provided where available

• An analysis of steps that are being taken in some schools to deal with the issue

• An analysis of Ministry of Education curricula and testing materials for gender bias with respect to boys‘/girls‘ achievement

• An analysis of the level of implementation in schools of relevant strategies as outlined in government documents

• Consultation with significant stakeholders

Further, the terms of the consultancy stipulated that recommendations were to be made for appropriate library resources and appropriate teacher professional development programmes that could assist in achieving the goal of enhanced performance levels by boys.

Background
One of the outputs of the first year of the OAS project Responses to the challenge of  improving the quality of recruitment and selection, initial formation, professional development and evaluation of teachers in countries of the hemisphere, is policy development. In particular the following targets were specified:

1. Policy for teacher education
2. Framework for teacher education programs
3. Recruitment and selection policies

There were a number of activities geared to facilitating the attainment of these targets. In the Caribbean sub-region among the major activities in this regard were two workshops held in November/December 2004. Teacher educators and Ministry of Education officers with responsibility for teacher education came together in Port of Spain, Trinidad, to identify best practices and to develop competencies and professional standards that would form the basis of a harmonized policy for teacher education in the sub-region. A follow-up 2-day workshop was held in The Bahamas in April 2005 to complete the validation of these outputs. A second major activity was the completion of the on-line questionnaire which was intended to facilitate the development of the Status of Teacher Education country reports. These reports had originally been intended to inform the workshop activities, however the poor response to this initiative frustrated this intention. The outputs from the workshops represent the fruits of shared experiences, discussion and dialogue among teacher  ducation professionals in the effort to provide a frame work for policies to improve the quality of recruitment and selection, initial formation, professional development and evaluation of teachers in Caribbean States.

To provide the overall context of ECCE in Trinidad and Tobago, this study centers on three levels—national, centre, and classroom. With major educational reform efforts underway, the government has begun implementing an ECCE programme to provide more preschool children with equal access to high quality early childhood education experiences. As a result, the government has promulgated new regulations and guidance that are beginning to spearhead change—launching new ECCE centres and calling on existing private, government/governmentassisted ECCE programmes to adopt these new requirements. Therefore, the Proposed National Standards for Regulating Early Childhood Services (2004), the National Model for Education in Trinidad and Tobago (draft 2007), and the National ECCE Curriculum Guide provided an important backdrop and resource for EDC’s methodology.

Research Questions
Our study is structured around the critical questions in EDC’s TOR, centering on primary and
secondary research questions. We examined three principal questions:
1. What is the state of quality of ECCE in Trinidad and Tobago?
2. What practices, policies, and systems at the local and national levels promote service
quality and access for children and families?
3. How can the institutional capacity and sustainability of MOE be strengthened and
expanded to ensure buy-in and support from the community, government, and business?