Working Paper Series: Special Edition of 2016 to 2018 Interns

The rest of the paper is organised as follows: the literature review is presented in section 2; the data and methodology used in the study are discussed in section 3;the results and analysis are presented in section 4, while the conclusion and policy considerations constitute section5. 2.0 Literature Review Economists have studied economic growth and development since Adam Smith set out to explain the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. In the 1950s and 1960s, Gary Becker, Jacob Mincer, T. W. Schultz, and others turned economists' attention to education and the role it plays in a variety of economic phenomena’ (Glewwe, 2002: 436). While there are innumerable definitions of education, this study focuses on formal education. Dean Borgman defines the term as follows: education is considered a process whereby knowledge or systematic information is received (acquired) or given (imparted) especially in schools or universities. 1 In the Caribbean, emphasis on the development of education within different countries has largely been a manifestation of perspectives on the function and role of education held by successive governments. In his work, Miller (1999) put Commonwealth Caribbean education in historical context. 2 He asserts that education has evolved over four major eras: Early Education: Laity, Piety, Family and Philanthropy; The Denominational System with State Support (beginning around 1833); The State System with Church Involvement (around the 1870s); and The National System of education (1950s and 1960s). Two significant developments influenced the path of education in the Caribbean. The Imperial Government’s policy that education should cater to the interest of the sugar industry and that education expenditure should not exceed 10.0 per cent of public expenditure served to prejudice the black population while halting the expansion of a school system that was being engineered to support all school-aged children who were fifteen yearsand under. 1 Definition taken from the Education Overview webpage - http://www.urbanministry.org/education-4 2 The term Caribbean in this context refers to the Commonwealth Caribbean, which consists of: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, and Turks and Caicos Islands.

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