Basseterre, St. Kitts, July 20, 2018 (SKNIS): As part of its core responsibility of bringing higher education to teachers and principals in the Eastern Caribbean, the School of Education, which is a part of the University of the West Indies (UWI), is proposing to offer a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Education in St. Kitts and Nevis.
Appearing on the radio-television show “Working for You” on July 18, Professor Dr. Joel Warrican of the University of the West Indies (UWI) Open Campus said that the School of Education at UWI Cave Hill Campus offers a number of programmes and has had a great relationship with all the colleges in the Eastern Caribbean, including St. Kitts and Nevis.
He added that the School of Education has a mandate to serve the Eastern Caribbean in the Teacher Education field in the region.
In recent discussions with the OECS Commission and with the joint Board of Teacher Education including the teachers’ colleges, the Ministries of Education, the Teachers Union and the School of Education in the Eastern Caribbean, it was decided that the school has to find a way to open access to as many teachers as possible, said Dr. Warrican.
“For example, the Bachelors in Education, we have made the decision that each college in the Eastern Caribbean should be able to take control of the Bachelors in Education and offer it at home, at their college with the Cave Hill Campus’ School of Education just acting as sort of a quality assurance mechanism,” he said.
He added that the programme is also for those persons who already have a degree in a content area such as Linguistics, Mathematics or Science and who are teaching in schools, but who are not teacher trained. The institution has also agreed that the teachers and principals should be able to access the Postgraduate Diploma in Education, which is already offered in St. Kitts.
Dr. Warrican explained that the intention of the School of Education is to take all the programmes that the school has to offer and bring them to the community.
In terms of the Master’s Degree, Professor Warrican said that St. Kitts and Nevis should be able to access the higher level learning opportunity.
“If you look at any given year at the Cave Hill Campus—the School of Education, you are just going to have maybe one or two persons from the profession here coming to do a Masters. Sometimes it’s zero. We want to change that.”
…So, we have made the decision that, and we wrote to all the colleges, (that) we are giving them the opportunity to partner with us as they have been good partners over the years that we will come and we will offer the Master’s on the ground,” said the professor.
The Master’s Programme will be delivered by tutors from the Clarence Fitzroy Bryant College (CFBC), from the communities, ministries and others, said Dr. Warrican. They will teach under the guidance of someone from UWI Cave Hill Campus.
“So, at Cave Hill there will be somebody responsible for the programme,” he said. “Everything that the students at Cave Hill get, the students in St. Kitts and Nevis will get it also because we will use our online learning space and post it there for the students to access it, but better yet that you have a discussion site so that the students can have that discussion and interface with a student in other Caribbean countries.”
