As global concerns increase about the effectiveness of schools in edu Tlcating and developing the human resource potential critical to economic and social advancement, countries worldwide have embarked on a wide range of school improvement initiatives. Central to these is the belief that good teachers are the most critical component of what schools need to do a good job, and good teachers need to benefit from good education programmes (Villegas-Reimers and Reimers 2000).

Stakeholder involvement in curriculum reform is one component of decentralization in the education system. Decentralization manifests itself in various forms, but the general notion is that it refers to the transfer or sharing of authority, responsibilities and resources from centralized bureaucratic systems to involve smaller administrative units (Stewart & Davis-Morrison, 2002).

"Medicine, law, business, engineering - these are noble pursuits, and necessary to sus tain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love - these are what we stay alive for." 

In 1998, UNESCO carried out an evaluation of countries in this hemisphere in the areas of Mathematics and mother tongue (English, Spanish, French). The results showed that the performance of the Cuban primary school children far exceeded that of any other country in the region'.

When the International Association for Music Education (ISME) held its conference in Tampa Florida in 1994, nine Caribbean music educators attended. But the enthusiasm with which they greeted the various events waned when the time came for ISME's national associations to meet. There was no such association in the Caribbean. There were no regional music associations of any kind despite the many commonalities that exist in musical cultures and education systems across the region.

Purpose This study was undertaken to unravel a conundrum. While the number of teachers trained to teach five subjects in grades 7–9 in the schools included in the Reform of Secondary Education Project in Jamaica almost equalled the number of teachers deployed to carry out these instructional responsibilities in those schools, after four years a significant number of the teachers deployed to teach the five subjects in grades 7–9 remained untrained.

During the last two decades, technology has improved extensively, bringing about changes in communication, transportation, and the performance of many other tasks. Technology has improved to the extent that societies across the world are questioning the validity of traditional modalities and are making rapid changes towards embracing these new developments. An example of this is "Virtual University", a computer software programme which allows the user to access course materials and class interaction via the Internet.

Before embarking on the substance of my presentation, some background information on St. Kitts & Nevis may be instructive and insightful. 
St. Kitts & Nevis has a population of about 42,000 people and it is the last of OECS countries to achieve political independence. 
We have a student population in the region of 11,000 in the primary and secondary school system. More than 1/3 of our population is of school going age.

The Institute of Education Annual is a fully refereed publication of the Institute of Education on the Mona Campus of the University of the West Indies and is a vehicle for the dissemination of the department's research and development. This, the fourth issue, appears after an absence of two years and commemorates the establishment of the Institute forty years ago. The title Perspectives on Education in the Caribbean has been selected because the papers discuss situations and developments in several Caribbean states.