Ed­u­ca­tion is one of the prin­ci­pal dri­vers of na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment. It de­vel­ops hu­man cap­i­tal, in­sti­tu­tions, val­ues and in­no­va­tion ca­pac­i­ty that en­able sus­tained eco­nom­ic, so­cial and po­lit­i­cal progress. These rea­sons have been the dri­vers be­hind the sub­stan­tial in­vest­ment in ed­u­ca­tion since self-gov­ern­ment in 1956. The dif­fi­cul­ty in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries such as Trinidad and To­ba­go is that the na­tion­al econ­o­my does not grow fast enough to ab­sorb all its school leavers.

Fur­ther­more, the world is in­creas­ing­ly in­ter­con­nect­ed. Even with re­stric­tions on im­mi­gra­tion im­posed by de­vel­oped coun­tries, peo­ple are in­creas­ing­ly mo­bile. The re­sult is that de­vel­op­ing coun­tries col­lec­tive­ly lose a large part of their ed­u­cat­ed elite to more de­vel­oped coun­tries. The em­i­gra­tion rate in­creas­es sig­nif­i­cant­ly with high­er ed­u­ca­tion lev­els and is par­tic­u­lar­ly high in small is­land de­vel­op­ing states. Hence the term “brain drain”: the loss of a coun­try’s skilled pro­fes­sion­als to more de­vel­oped coun­tries.

While es­ti­mates vary, T&T has one of the high­est rates of high­ly skilled em­i­gra­tion in the world, with be­tween 64% and 75% of its ter­tiary-ed­u­cat­ed grad­u­ates even­tu­al­ly em­i­grat­ing to OECD coun­tries. In gen­er­al, em­i­gra­tion rates al­so in­crease when so­cial con­di­tions de­te­ri­o­rate or the econ­o­my is de­pressed. Trinidad and To­ba­go’s econ­o­my has been de­pressed since 2014 and the crime rate has wors­ened in the last 25 years.

It could be ar­gued that a high rate of em­i­gra­tion leads to a high lev­el of re­mit­tances. This ar­gu­ment may hold in oth­er coun­tries, but T&T does not com­pare well with its Caribbean neigh­bours in this re­gard. Trinidad and To­ba­go re­ceives the low­est lev­el of in­com­ing re­mit­tances com­pared to Bar­ba­dos, Guyana, and Ja­maica. Re­mit­tances ac­count for less than 1% of GDP, com­pared to over 10% for Ja­maica, Guyana and Bar­ba­dos.

No coun­try can con­tin­ue ex­pend­ing scarce re­sources on­ly for its most high­ly trained grad­u­ates to em­i­grate. The re­cent clo­sure of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery and the idling of a sig­nif­i­cant part of the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor have added pres­sure to the cur­rent labour en­vi­ron­ment. The Min­is­ter of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing, Prakash Per­sad, has al­so high­light­ed the need to over­haul the high­er ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor due to bal­loon­ing costs and a labour mar­ket that is sat­u­rat­ed with grad­u­ates. The health min­is­ter in the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion made a sim­i­lar point re­gard­ing the num­ber of grad­u­at­ing doc­tors.

The re­al­i­ty is that the econ­o­my has not di­ver­si­fied fast enough to ab­sorb the vol­ume of stu­dents grad­u­at­ing from state-fund­ed ter­tiary pro­grammes. Min­is­ter Per­sad has called for a sys­temic over­haul of the ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion frame­work, ad­vo­cat­ing deep­er col­lab­o­ra­tion among lo­cal in­sti­tu­tions, re­duc­ing du­pli­cat­ed ser­vices and piv­ot­ing to­ward in­dus­try-aligned, dig­i­tal and tech­ni­cal skills train­ing. Since the State is the largest fund­ing agency in ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion, the biggest ad­just­ment will be re­quired for State-spon­sored in­sti­tu­tions and pro­grammes.

Fur­ther, de­spite nu­mer­ous promis­es from many ad­min­is­tra­tions, no gov­ern­ment has ever de­vel­oped or ful­ly im­ple­ment­ed a com­pre­hen­sive Na­tion­al Man­pow­er Plan. One has been ac­tive­ly in de­vel­op­ment since late 2020 by the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment in col­lab­o­ra­tion with UNICEF, but the pub­lic is not aware of how this is in­form­ing pub­lic pol­i­cy de­vel­op­ment.

Last week, the UN­ESCO 2026 re­port raised struc­tur­al and eq­ui­ty is­sues on the role of the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) mech­a­nism in T&T’s ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem. It con­tains many sen­si­ble com­ments and sug­ges­tions. But there are broad­er sys­temic weak­ness­es in the Trinidad and To­ba­go ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem that the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter has iden­ti­fied and ac­knowl­edged. What are the next steps and what is the ac­tion plan?