Dominica’s Minister for Education, Human Resource Development, Sports and Youth Affairs, Vince Henderson

The Minister made the remark at the opening ceremony of the 18th Meeting of OECS Ministers of Education in Roseau on Wednesday.

“We must continue to work to ensure that the many challenges with which we are faced that we can collectively overcome them. We know with the decline of our agricultural sector we have to continue to struggle in the development of the services sector.

“Therefore the role that education plays is becoming even more vital to our development and recognizing people are at the centre, at the heart of development, we must continue to invest heavily in education.”

The Minister added that in order to respond to the various challenges and opportunities created by globalization, and in order to respond in a timely way to the rapid developments in Information and Communications Technologies, “we must examine our system of education”.

Henderson also spoke of the need to focus on teacher training and quality teaching to ensure that the children and students of the sub-region will have the ability “to learn how to learn, to learn to become independent learners because it is impossible for us to teach our children everything that is happening in this rapidly changing world”.

“Our efforts here over the next few days should be focused on how we can improve the quality of education and importantly the relevance of education within our sub-region,” Henderson concluded.

The theme for the 18th Meeting of OECS Education Ministers is Education Policy and Practice in the OECS: Integrating and Sustaining National and Regional Initiatives.