This case study is about introducing computer-assisted instruction (CAI) in primary and secondary schools in Jamaica. The management of the educational system is school-based and, since 1989, the Government has imposed a policy of partnership with the private sector and communities in providing and reforming education in the 1990s. This case represents bottom-up educational reform as both the Government and the international agencies rendering development assistance have placed low priority on computer-assisted instruction in primary and secondary schools.

The Organisation of Eastern States (OECS), comprising the nine small island states stretching from the British Virgin Islands in the north to Grenada in the south, are not newcomers to regionalism and regional cooperation. These countries have been part of some federal structure for almost as long as their colonial history. In colonial times the groupings consisted of shifting combinations of islands labelled Leeward Islands or Windward Islands.

In the Commonwealth Caribbean, on average, girls start schooling Learlier, attend school more regularly, repeat fewer grades, are less likely to drop out and therefore stay in school longer, and achieve higher standards of educational performance than boys. In the adult population more women are literate than men. Girls are more highly represented in those sections of the secondary and tertiary levels of the education system which enhance the prospects of upward social mobility. In a real sense girls and women constitute the first sex in Caribbean education.

The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, it is to review progress in the Caribbean context in achieving the goals specified in the Framework for Action of the World Declaration of Education for All (EFA), Jomtien, Thailand, March 1990. Second, it is to identify the constraints faced by the region in the effort to implement programmes and projects to achieve the EFA goals, and further, to determine if there have been unanticipated developments since Jomtien to which the Caribbean must respond.

The purpose of this paper is to document and discuss the 1981 reforms in teacher education in Jamaica. These important reforms have not yet been documented elsewhere and will no doubt be the subject of future research and debate within the education community. This paper:
 

This assessment of primary education in the Caribbean at the end of the 1980s considers how many, and which, children actually receive this type of education, the kind and quality of the education provided and received, and its cost. Further, the effectiveness of the educational provision is measured, and the constraints and challenges ahead are described.

Since 1952 the Department of Educational Studies (DES), with peri­odic variations of its name, has been involved in training secondary school teachers. Indeed, its establishment marked the first attempt to build indigenous capacity to train secondary school teachers in the Commonwealth Caribbean. Later, through the Certificate in Education and the Bachelor of Education (BEd), which commenced in the late 1960s, DES became involved in training primary school principals and teachers, with the college programme of initial training a prerequisite.

The education sector is integrally related and profoundly bound to politics, social stratification, culture and the economy. This is a generalization that could be applied to education wherever it is found. The fulcrum of the interplay of these forces resides finnly in educational administration. Through educational administration these interlocking factors fashion and shape the educational system.