Sonjah Stanley Niaah | Who has responsibility for educational reform?

‘Recognition, Justice and Development’ is the theme for the new UN Decade for People of African Descent (2025-2034), and time is of the essence considering what was not achieved in the previous Decade. Recognising the wrongs of the past, understanding the need for repair, and progressing beyond underdevelopment and disenfranchisement as a result of historical injustice can take many forms.

One key area of focus is education, and I have been thinking about the Moyne Commission Report of 1945 following civil and labour unrest in the Caribbean as educational reform takes centre stage in Caribbean territories. The P. J. Patterson Institute for Africa Caribbean Advocacy recently highlighted the need for considering educational transformation in the Caribbean alongside Africa through partnership in the cause to centre a shared heritage and identity. This is even more critical a consideration when we reflect on the origins of the Moyne Commission and the report produced in respect of education in the Caribbean.

First, the Moyne Report, just like the World Bank’s 2025 report on education in the Caribbean, highlighted deficits that can be traced back to the plantation system under colonialism. The findings were generally thought to reflect that citizens of the West Indies were overburdened by injustices of the past, which they were carrying along with centuries of neglect. In the case of the Moyne Commission, the Colonial Development and Welfare Act was passed in 1940 to engage long-term reconstruction, ultimately an attempt to keep the Empire together.

The lack of commitment to achieving recommendations of the Moyne Report was appreciable, and the Caribbean has remained a region with systemic inequality, with an exponentially high need for socio-economic reform. The Moyne Commission suggested educational reform, specifically curriculum change at the primary and secondary levels, as well as increased funding for education. Some of the achievements following the implementation of the report were organisational restructuring, increased school infrastructure, and establishment of the West Indies School of Public Health.

IS THE WORLD BANK RESPONSIBLE?

In the case of the World Bank, Country Director for the Caribbean Lilia Burunciuc explained the crisis in education at a February 17 webinar as “jeopardising the future of the Caribbean”. She highlighted the critical challenge with failing systems that today deliver low literacy, numeracy, and critical-thinking skills from teaching practices that have remained traditional inside rigid curricula, low teacher recruitment standards, and static instructional methods. Even worse, the one-size-fit-all school system for the majority is not robust enough to deliver special education, and where the secondary education system is concerned, there are widening economic gaps and intense social inequality that prove calamitous for achieving solid educational outcomes outside privileged or elite secondary schools.

What is clear is that the same concerns around educational infrastructure and curriculum from the Moyne Commission’s 1945 report reappear in the World Bank’s 2025 report. In the end, the Moyne Commission Report resulted in increased funding allocation for educational development. It is still unclear whether such an act of repair will be seen from the World Bank, which has been responsible for constricting socio-economic transformation in the Caribbean based on conditionalities and tight reigns on debt management.

Are we closer to achieving the outcomes in education we need for advancing on regional development? The present is tied up with the past. Legacies of colonial injustices are pervasive as they hamper the advancement of education systems in the region.

STRATEGIC MOVES

Territories in the Caribbean, such as Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, have established internal reform to national education systems, a monumental effort given the constraints imposed by external forces on national budgets and institutional infrastructure. The CARICOM region has had to react and ‘tek han mek fashion’ when faced with the continual legacies of inequality. Consequently, the concerns cited in the reports above only affirm the demands identified in Item 6 of the CARICOM 10-point plan for educational programmes, which details: “CARICOM governments inherited a flawed education system, inadequate schools, high illiteracy and a system based on structural discrimination. CARICOM countries have worked hard to correct the situation. However, widespread functional illiteracy and inequitable systems of education still exist and have subverted the development efforts of these States and represent a drag upon social and economic advancement.”

TAKING A PAUSE FOR REPAIR

There is consensus that the region is underperforming despite the best effort of governments. One missing ingredient is the understanding that a band-aid approach can cover a wound but scars remain that are often permanent. In the case of educational reform in the region, a missing ingredient is the systematic approach to remove the scars of the past, wrestle with them through truth telling, and build solid foundations through education that secure the future of Caribbean youth. It is not only instructional and institutional change that are required, but also around values, attitudes, culture, history, and heritage.

One key initiative has been the attempt to mainstream the idea of repair, democratise the understanding of responsibility, and use education as a platform. Alongside the critical need for educational reform, the recognition that international debate on responsibility and reparatory justice took on conservative proportions was a key driver. The CARICOM Reparation Commission (CRC) has been engaging in strategic negotiations with allies, leading to the acceptance that the change needed in the education system can only be advanced when the youth are engaged and their voices heard.

TACKLING REPARATION TOGETHER

Answers to questions such as ‘Can you apologise for a wrongful act by an ancestor? Should reparations be paid to governments? How do we engage youth on matters of reparatory justice? must also come from the youth who are soon to inherit the task of repair from the forerunners of the Reparation Movement. In order to achieve this, the Centre for Reparation Research (CRR), through strategic attempts at youth engagement, circulated a call for participation through international debate in December 2024. The project of Tackling Reparation Together is aimed at mainstreaming reparation from street to stage. Structured debates among students from 24 schools from the Bahamas, Curaçao, Guyana, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United Kingdom may yield the platform we need for a new generation of engagement, identity formation, and confidence building.

Considering the points made some 80 years apart by members of Moyne Commission, the World Bank and CARICOM governments, which are grappling with regional development, repair is past urgent. In collaboration with partners and key stakeholders, the CRR launched the International Reparation Debate Competition for secondary school students. By engaging secondary-level students in structured debates, the initiative will increase advocacy, enhance historical understanding, and promote meaningful conversations inside homes, communities, schools, and, by extension, the public domain on the legacy and future of African-descended peoples.

Sonjah Stanley Niaah is director of the Centre for Reparation Research and professor of cultural studies at The University of the West Indies. Send feedback to reparation.research@uwimona.edu.jm.