Two Technical Advisers, working on behalf of the European Union, are undertaking a functional review for the Department and Ministry of Education of the Government of Anguilla.
The advisers, Mr. Nick Novell and Mr. Barry Reeves, now on the island, meeting with officials in the Department and Ministry of Education, will be making several other visits to the island to complete their work including a series of recommendations.
On Wednesday, September 26, they met with members of the Senior Management Team of the Albena Lake-Hodge Comprehensive School at the Teachers’ Resource Centre, where they spoke to The Anguillian newspaper.
“We have been funded by the European Union to come to Anguilla to look at the whole process of the strategy, budgeting, management and quality of education,” Mr. Reeves, the main spokesman, told the newspaper. “The ultimate aim is to support Anguilla to make its education system more effective for the good of the citizens and the country.”
He continued: “Our work covers all levels of education – from pre-primary to primary, secondary, vocational and higher education. Right now we are doing a functional review to basically assess the current situation. This is because it is very important that we address the key issues especially literacy, numeracy and all of the different factors in terms of curriculum, management of the school and of course the [state] of the resources after the terrible hurricane last year which knocked the country back in terms of the infrastructure the schools had. We are also to make recommendations on some things we are able to work on directly including a public expenditure review of the education sector. The main thing we will be looking at is what we can suggest such as improved efficiencies in the overall management of the education sector with the objective to get more out of the same resources.
“If we can make some recommendations to try to get more resources that would even be better. We know that the Government’s revenues are restricted in that sense, but I think we are quite confident. We have worked all around the world on education programmes and I think there are some things that can easily make the system more effective if they are implemented. That’s the big challenge. It is easier to make the recommendations than to actually implement them.”
Mr. Reeves said that he and Mr. Novell had just submitted an inception report about how they were planning to do their work. “We are coming to Anguilla on four missions,” he explained. “This time we are here for three weeks and will be back at the end of November for another three weeks; then we will be here again in January and February/March. This is a work in stages.”
Asked whether the European Union will provide the funding to implement their recommendations, Mr. Reeves replied:
“Yes. The EU is already helping with a budget support programme which means if certain indicators are met the EU will pay the Treasury certain amounts of money. But, apart from that, there is money from the UK Government for capital works and there is also some assistance from UNICEF as well. Primarily, we are looking at sustainability and what the Government can do with its own resources over the long term.”
