Instituting Universal Secondary Education: Caribbean Students' Perceptions of their Schooling Experiences

As Caribbean governments continue to invest heavily in education as a major strategy for national and economic development, the question of student achievement and the need for increasing the effectiveness of schools in producing maximum student learning remains a dominant feature on the regional educational agenda, especially given recent education reforms which have mandated secondary educational provisions for every student in most Caribbean territories. However, despite this no Caribbean study thus far has examined Universal Secondary Education (USE) from the perspective of the students in the Caribbean who have now been afforded access to secondary education. This study takes an in-depth look at students’ experiences at eight secondary classrooms in the tri-island state of Grenada, Carriacou and Petite Martinique with the inception of Universal Secondary Education (USE). The study sought to examine the experiences of students in the lower performing secondary schools most affected by USE. Data were collected through a mixed method approach which included a survey of fifty (50) students and one (1) student focus group from each of the eight targeted schools. Student responses were grouped according to the following categories derived from data coding and analysis: classroom relationships, classroom teaching and learning, school curriculum, and school infrastructure. The findings present students’ explanations for the causes of poor student-teacher relationships, and inadequacies in teaching and learning, curriculum organization and physical infrastructure at the secondary level. This study therefore adds students’ voices to the persevering debate on educational improvement in the Caribbean in the 21st century of universal access to education. Keywords: universal secondary education, secondary schooling, caribbean education, access to education, student voice, schooling experience, student-teacher relationship, teaching and learnin