To­day, many coun­tries are work­ing to trans­form ed­u­ca­tion. UN­ESCO right­ly states that “this re­quires a com­pre­hen­sive and in­te­grat­ed ap­proach that reimag­ines cur­ric­u­la, teach­ing meth­ods and life­long learn­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties.”

A just so­ci­ety is in­clu­sive. Is our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem in­clu­sive? Do all stu­dents in T&T have equal ac­cess to qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion, re­gard­less of their abil­i­ties, back­grounds, or dis­abil­i­ties? Is our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem equip­ping stu­dents with the knowl­edge, skills and val­ues they need in our rapid­ly evolv­ing, high­ly tech­no­log­i­cal world? Are our ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions fos­ter­ing 21st-cen­tu­ry skills such as crit­i­cal think­ing, cre­ativ­i­ty, col­lab­o­ra­tion, prob­lem-solv­ing skills and dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy? Are we em­pow­er­ing stu­dents to be au­tonomous life­long learn­ers?

Pope Fran­cis right­ly stat­ed: “Ed­u­ca­tion can­not be neu­tral. It is ei­ther pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive; ei­ther it en­rich­es or it im­pov­er­ish­es; ei­ther it en­ables a per­son to grow or it lessens, even cor­rupts him/her.”

Catholic so­cial teach­ing speaks about the prin­ci­ple of “in­te­gral hu­man de­vel­op­ment,” that is, the de­vel­op­ment of every di­men­sion of a per­son e.g. in­tel­lec­tu­al, phys­i­cal, spir­i­tu­al, emo­tion­al, so­cial, and of every per­son; mov­ing from less hu­man to more hu­man con­di­tions. De­vel­op­ment should be per­son-cen­tred.

UN­ESCO states: “The world has seen re­mark­able progress in the glob­al ex­pan­sion of ac­cess to ed­u­ca­tion in the 80 years since UN­ESCO was found­ed. In 1950, on­ly around 47 per cent of the world’s chil­dren aged 5–14 were en­rolled in school.

To­day, that fig­ure has near­ly dou­bled, with 90 per cent of pri­ma­ry school-age chil­dren and 86 per cent of low­er sec­ondary school-age chil­dren in ed­u­ca­tion. Yet, de­spite the clear im­por­tance of ed­u­ca­tion, it is at risk. Around the world, 273 mil­lion chil­dren and young peo­ple are out of school…” (April 26 , 2026).

I pay trib­ute to the thou­sands of ed­u­ca­tors who are striv­ing to pro­vide qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion for stu­dents. How­ev­er, we need a whole-coun­try ap­proach to ed­u­ca­tion: in­volv­ing key stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing whole-of-gov­ern­ment col­lab­o­ra­tion, par­ents/fam­i­lies, schools, the wider com­mu­ni­ty, in­clud­ing the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty. The chal­lenge we have in T&T is to move from pol­i­cy to im­ple­men­ta­tion, mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­a­tion.

T&T’s Ed­u­ca­tion Pol­i­cy 2023-2027, states that it “not on­ly re­flects our na­tion­al de­vel­op­men­tal goals, but al­so un­der­scores our ded­i­ca­tion to the achieve­ment of in­ter­na­tion­al man­dates, no­tably the Unit­ed Na­tions’ 2030 Agen­da for Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment.”

Last year (2025), Cab­i­net “ap­proved the UNC Man­i­festo as the Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment Pol­i­cy guide for Trinidad and To­ba­go. The fo­cus is on cre­at­ing eco­nom­ic growth, job cre­ation, so­cial jus­tice through strong lead­er­ship, pri­ori­tis­ing the needs of every cit­i­zen.”

These are im­por­tant ar­eas that are in­ter­linked. The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion (MoE) has re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for “the man­age­ment of all pub­lic ear­ly child­hood care ed­u­ca­tion (EC­CE), pri­ma­ry, sec­ondary and ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tions and over­sight of all pri­vate ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tions in T&T (in con­junc­tion with the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s Ed­u­ca­tion, Re­search and Tech­nol­o­gy Di­vi­sion).”

Since gov­ern­ment min­istries should not be work­ing in si­los, it is crit­i­cal that the MoE re­views the ef­fec­tive­ness of its col­lab­o­ra­tion with key stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing oth­er Gov­ern­ment min­istries and spe­cialised bod­ies with which it works.

For ex­am­ple, the min­istries of:

• Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty e.g. re­gard­ing school safe­ty, plac­ing po­lice in schools, ac­cess for mi­grant chil­dren,

• Health e.g. re­gard­ing stu­dent health, nu­tri­tion, psy­cho­log­i­cal sup­port ser­vices,

• So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices e.g. Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion, which ad­dress­es is­sues such as child abuse, ne­glect, and so­cial vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, along­side the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty,

• Pub­lic Util­i­ties, which works with the Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny for school re­pairs, in­fra­struc­ture, jan­i­to­r­i­al, and se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices,

• Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing, in­clud­ing Tech­ni­cal and Vo­ca­tion­al Ed­u­ca­tion and Train­ing (TVET), and train­ing ini­tia­tives, par­tic­u­lar­ly through YTEPP and NTA,

• Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment e.g. pro­mot­ing phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion, sports ini­tia­tives, and ex­tracur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties in schools,

• Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence, re­gard­ing digi­tis­ing ed­u­ca­tion, in­clud­ing AI im­ple­men­ta­tion and stu­dent man­age­ment in­for­ma­tion sys­tems,

• Fi­nance, re­gard­ing fund­ing for ed­u­ca­tion ini­tia­tives and in­ter­na­tion­al tech­ni­cal co­op­er­a­tion.

The MoE al­so col­lab­o­rates with

• The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA)—Ed­u­ca­tion Di­vi­sion,

• spe­cialised bod­ies such as ACTT, NI­HERST, and COSTAATT for stan­dards and high­er ed­u­ca­tion,

• non-state ac­tors and civ­il so­ci­ety.

If we are to trans­form our sys­tem, we al­so need to in­vest in teach­ers and in­volve youth, for ex­am­ple, by “en­hanc­ing pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment, equip­ping teach­ers with new ped­a­gog­i­cal skills, dig­i­tal tools, and up­dat­ed cur­ric­u­la...Many coun­tries in­creas­ing­ly recog­nise the im­por­tance of em­bed­ding youth en­gage­ment with­in their gov­er­nance frame­works, en­sur­ing that poli­cies and de­ci­sion-mak­ing process­es in­clude the voic­es of those di­rect­ly im­pact­ed by trans­form­ing ed­u­ca­tion” (UN­ESCO).

Ed­u­ca­tion is a fun­da­men­tal hu­man right. Let’s en­sure it is avail­able, ac­ces­si­ble, ac­cept­able, and adapt­able for all.