SECTION V: SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN ST. VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES
Secondary Education in St. Vincent and the Grenadines is provided by 27 institutions, 19 of which are public. The remaining eight schools are owned by churches
but operate with substantial financial assistance from the Government. These
eight schools are referred to as Assisted Secondary (AS) schools. In 2018-2019,
the overall secondary enrolment stood at 9,510 with the Gross Enrolment
Rate (GER) being 99.10 while the Net Enrolment Rate (NER) was 88.89. The
latter shows that the majority of pupils between 12-16 years are retained within
the secondary cycle, while the former reflects that there are also pupils who
entered early and are “under-aged” as well those who are a bit older and
“over-aged”. The majority of secondary pupils attend public or
government secondary schools as shown in the 28.58% private enrolment.
There was a marginal increase in the overall number of teachers from 707
in 2017-2018 to 712 in 2018-2019. Over the last approximately ten (10) years,
it was observed that the teaching staff is increasingly comprised of females,
and 2018-2019 is no exception. Of the 712 teachers at the secondary level, 490
are female. Between the 2015-2016 and 2018-2019 academic years there was
an increase in the proportion of trained teachers from 57.08 % to 62.05%.
In 2018-2019, of the overall 445 trained teachers, 317 or 71.24% are female.
While efforts are on-going to improve the skills of the teaching staff, there are s
till concerns regarding the best measures which could be employed to assist
pupils who are not meeting the desired benchmarks or worse yet dropping out of
the cycle as seen in the 188 pupils which declined from the previous year’s 278
who exited prematurely in 2017-2018.