The Pre-primary to Primary Transitions Pilot Project was initiated in 2002 as part of UNICEF’s support for Jamaica’s Basic Education and Early Childhood Education and Development (BEECD) programme. The overall aim of the BEECD programme is to support those goals of the Government of Jamaica’s (GOJ) five-year education plan that seek to improve the quality of basic education, particularly for poor children from birth to 12 years.

This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the first publication of the Caribbean Journal of Education. The need for a Caribbean journal focused on educational issues had become apparent especially after the School of Education was established at the University of the West Indies (UWI) in 1972. In the first issue of the journal, the Dean of the newly established School, Professor R. N. Murray, outlined the reasons for establishing the Journal and the purposes that it would achieve.

This paper assumes that the preparation, orientation and induction of new teacher educators who teach prospective teachers is as important as the preparation of prospective teachers, and is thus worthy of careful scrutiny and analysis.

The purpose of this article is to describe the origins of qualitative inquiry, research and writing in the Caribbean. The period under review goes back more than 200 years. The paper begins with a discussion of the criteria for determining what counts as qualitative research, the conditions under which research was conducted and made public in the 19th century, and the differences in standards between then and now. It will then briefly describe the categories of work that meet most or all of these criteria for qualitative research.

School personnel often lament the quality of newly trained teachers who, they say, are unable to manage and control classes, and who seem unable to carry out effectively the routines of teaching. Teacher educators decry the rapidity with which the new graduate ceases to attend to important principles and concepts learned in college. Researchers have often referred to the gap between theory (what is taught in college) and practice (what occurs in the classroom).

In recent years, the differences in academic achievement between boys and girls in many Caribbean countries have been much debated. References have been made to the number of boys and girls who are awarded Common Entrance Examination (CEE) places for entry to secondary schools, the proportion of boys as compared to girls who obtain level 1 or 2 in the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) examination, and the number of men and women enrolled at the University of the West Indies and other tertiary-level institutions.

The paper reports results of research on the effects of streaming on boys and girls in secondary schools in Jamaica. The study found that girls were more represented in high stream classes, while boys were more represented in low stream classes. Streaming affected academic achievement, students' experiences of school practices such as being beaten or insulted, and students' sense of alienation from school. There were gender differences in all responses, with low stream boys most likely to do poorly academically and to experience negative school practices.