From the Archive: Education a 'social, economic and political strategy'

The Sixth Commonwealth Education Conference was held in Kingston, Jamaica, exactly 35 years ago this week.

The conference – whose theme was ‘Managing Education – Innovation, Implementation, Consolidation’ - paved the way for improvements in the way educational planners and administrators worked across the Commonwealth.

In his keynote address, the Prime Minister of Jamaica, Michael Manley, told conference delegates that education should be considered as part of a wider “social, economic and political strategy” pursued by governments.

“Education is always an extension of political purpose and must be seen as a primary, perhaps the primary agent, that is available to that purpose,” he said.

Over the course of the conference, education ministers and their officials took part in more than 70 plenary sessions and group discussions, discussing topics as diverse as teacher evaluation in rural districts of East Africa to single teacher schools in the far north of Canada.

Ministers also reaffirmed the importance of bilateral programmes of assistance as well as the Commonwealth Fund for Technical Co-operation (CFTC) as tools to fund education and training activities across member countries.

Arnold Smith, then Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, writing shortly after the conference, recalled how at that time Commonwealth countries were spending more on education than at any other time in their history.

“Let us remember these things,” he wrote. “Ministries of Education now control a larger proportion of the national budget than any other ministry. It is their duty to allocate their resources wisely and effectively; in other words to be good managers as well as good supervisors and evaluators.

“That in brief, was what the Sixth Education Conference was intended to accomplish, and that, also, is the yardstick we should use to measure our success.”

The conference followed previous education conferences in Oxford in 1959, New Delhi in 1962, Ottawa in 1964, Lagos in 1968 and Canberra in 1971. Chaired by the Jamaican Minister of Education, Howard Cooke, it was attended by 213 delegates from 39 Commonwealth countries and dependent territories.

During the conference an exhibition on the theme of ‘Innovation in Education in the Caribbean’ was organised featuring work in mathematics, science, agricultural education, and arts and crafts.

Key Links:

• Education
• Country Profile: Jamaica