The Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) in Jamaica is administered to students in the year in which they are expected to conclude their primary education. It assesses students for placement in secondary schools, where they are expected to continue their education by building on the foundation that they received at the primary level.

This paper examines different models and theories of leadership with a view to discerning relevance, meaning and applicability to St. Lucia. It reviews the evolution and distinguishing features of leadership and compares selected models in order to determine their significance to the St. Lucia context of achieving quality schooling.

This paper reports on the development of an observation instrument that is designed to assess teachers of language and literacy in the Caribbean, and to provide an avenue for feedback to these teachers. The instrument contains four broad dimensions (planning, execution, classroom environment, and reflection), each with several items that are based on literature in the field, and validated by literacy professionals in the Caribbean. The items on the instrument were piloted across the region and modified before the final version was produced.

This multi-case ethnographic study examined the gender beliefs of two teachers and 12 parents and the gender identity of thirty 8- to 10- year-old boys in two primary schools in Jamaica. The study was conducted against the background of gross underachievement among Jamaican boys and the research literature pointing to gender socialization as a factor in the declining results and interest in academic studies. Through 10 weeks of observations, interviews and focus group discussions, answers were sought for the following questions: 
1. What beliefs do teachers hold about gender? 

There have been concerns among Jamaican scholars that students' role models (RMs) contribute to gender differences in academic functioning in Jamaica. The current study empirically investigated gender differences in the RMs of 269 fifth form traditional high school students in Jamaica and relations between RM choice and academic attitudes, goals and achievement. Using mixed qualitative/quantitative research methods, nine categories of RMs emerged. Consistent with international research findings, parents were by far the most frequently selected RMs.

Violence, in all its forms, is associated with hierarchies of power in human relationships which result from divisions based on social organizing structures such as gender, race and class. In most societies, violence is commonly associated with power inequality in relations of gender and with a “normalized” hegemonic masculinity in which, according to Mills (2001) “…boys’ and men’s identities are entwined with their abilities to demonstrate their power over girls and women and also over other boys and men.”

Situated within the global discourse on gender equity and justice in education systems and implications for student development, this article explores students’ perceptions of fairness within the school environments of four selected Caribbean countries: Belize, Guyana, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago. Through the use of content analysis, essays completed by grade nine/fourth form students from 39 schools across the countries under investigation are analysed to determine the extent to which students feel they are fairly treated at their institutions.

Barriteau (1998, 187) proposes a theoretical framework which, she purports, can be used to examine how the concept of gender and gender systems operate within the cultural, social and political economy of states. She further indicates that a broader intention was to generate a gendered analytical model, which could be applied to studying a wide range of social and economic phenomena inherent in Caribbean and other societies.

Over the last two to three decades there has been heightened awareness on the part of educators and policy makers of the ways in which schooling, through a range of structures and processes, reproduces and reinforces a hierarchical gender order both in schools and in the wider social system. As a result, there has been a burgeoning indigenous discourse which examines gender bias and sex discrimination at all levels of Caribbean education systems. This special issue of the Caribbean Journal of Education on Gender and Education is a further contribution to this project.

The countries of the Anglophone Caribbean wish to have their tertiary education systems play a more significant role in nation building, consistent with a developing consensus on the critical role of tertiary education in processes of national development. However, they are confronted with two problems: the first is their comparatively low levels of tertiary-level enrolment; the second is their comparatively high levels of national debt. The challenges of financing tertiary education are therefore particularly acute in the region.