Caribbean countries need to work their way out of debt. Most Caribbean economies continue to rely on tourism. In a few countries, oil and natural gas underpin the economy. The financial services industry, which had helped to bolster some of these economies, has shrunk in recent years. Graduates with engineering degrees continue to have severe challenges in finding employment in their field within the Caribbean region. This human resource, for the most part, is wasted.

After many years of waiting we have at last seen the publication of the first of the six-volume UNESCO series on the History of lhe Caribbean. Though the first to appear in print chronologically, the present volume is the third in terms of the arrangement of the series. It focuses attention on the slave societies of the region and attempts to look at the ways in which this institution affected the various linguistic/colonial groupings.

Technical and vocational education has become a strong focus area for Caribbean countries as they seek to advance their social and economic status in the globally competitive market. Given this context, schools in the Caribbean offer technical and vocational education and training (TVET) subjects to students from various examining bodies. This paper looks at how schools in Jamaica are doing in TVET in the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations and the leadership and management principles and practices used in administering TVET in selected top performing schools.

The buzz word in education today is “STEM”, especially in TVET circles where it appears to be critical in the development of technical minds. It has been argued that “STEM Education atempts to transform the typical teacher-centred classroom by encouraging a curriculum that is driven by problem-solving, discovery, exploratory learning, and requires students to actively engage a situation in order to find its solution” (Fioriello, 2011).

There are misconceptions in some quarters that tools used by medical doctors are solely  mechanical, and that if students who pursue studies in Medical Sciences obtain mastery in the process of elimination and apply this to their multiple-choice examinations they are likely to succeed. However, these are limited views of such professionals and students. In order to be successful, practising and prospective medical doctors, like their counterparts in different fields, utilize other tools in their professional, academic and private endeavours. One such tool is writing.

This study examines student retention using Astin’s Input-Environment-Output model of assessment. Using administrative data, binomial logistic regression was performed to identify factors for successful student retention of first year, full-time, First-degree entrants at a Caribbean university. The odds of being retained were highest for scholarship recipients and female students. Living on campus was found to reduce one’s odds of being retained. The number of courses passed in high school and age were found to be statistically significant.

Educational Reform in the Commonwealth Caribbean comes as Series #54 in the INTERAMER collection of the Organization of American States, which focuses upon social development and education in Latin America and the Caribbean region. The volume is a collection of essays representing "an overview of the educational reforms that have occurred in several of the English-speaking Caribbean countries over the past few years", and is edited by an internationally outstanding and recognized thought leader in education in the Caribbean.

This paper presents an insight into a volume on education and training in the Caribbean tourism industry. The author recognises that though tourism is the main industry in the region, there exists a great need for more research into Caribbean tourism.

The introduction of the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE), which has taken the place of the A-level examinations set by and for British institutions, was a logical step in the process of decolonization of educational practices in the officially English-speaking Caribbean. It also offered an opportunity to base curricular and examination practices in local realities. The CAPE syllabus for “Communication Studies” very clearly aims to do so.

This valuable bibliography of research in gender and education in the Commonwealth Caribbean has been carefully compiled at the request of the University of the West Indies’ (UWI) Centre for Gender and Development Studies and published by the Institute of Education of the UWI, Mona, with funding support from UNESCO.