Professional standards far teachers are widely used in teacher training and continuing pro­fessional development in England. As a whole, the standards represent a set of demands each teacher might be expected to achieve in order to demonstrate competence and progress in his or her career. This paper begins with an outline of the use of the professional stan­dards for teaching as they are currently applied in England. It then goes on to consider the applicability of professional standards for newly qualified and more experienced teachers in the Caribbean.

The development of a valid and reliable instrument and related procedures for the assessment of practice teaching is often a protracted exercise requiring inputs from various stakeholders. This paper discusses the challenges of developing such an instrument by the Joint Board of Teacher Education (JBTE) of the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona campus, to replace an existing instrument which had been in use for several years, as part of the effort to reshape the assessment of the practicum which forms an important part of the initial teacher training programmes of the JBTE. 

In today’s 21st century educational era, we have learnt that educational access cannot be assumed to mean educational success for every child. In many classrooms across developing countries, one third of the students are physically present but disengaged from learning. They are in school but achieving no greater academic success than the child who is out of school (Center for Global Development, 2013).

The work of the external examiner has been an integral part of quality monitoring activities of the Jamaican Joint Board of Teacher Education (JBTE) since its inception in the early 1960s. In recent years as the JBTE's approach to quality assessment has changed from one of monitoring to one of quality assurance, so too have the expectations for the role(s) its external examiners are expected to play. As with any attempts at educational and ad­ministrative reform, these changes bring challenges.

Quality has always been a major concern in higher education; in fact some accrediting agencies date back to the 1800s (Rhoades and Sporn 2002). Since the mid-1980s, issues of quality assurance have been raised in various coun­tries and international fora with increasing rapidity. Today there is an on­going international conversation about the quality of higher education and quality assurance in tertiary education worldwide.

The imperatives for the establishment of quality assurance mechanisms, and the need to create a culture of quality within higher education have been well established in the various debates on quality which have intensified since the 1980s.

The ever-changing needs of society justify the necessity for teachers to engage in continuous learning. Teachers are encouraged to participate in professional development activities that will help them develop the knowledge and skills that are required to meet the needs of a 21st century society.