Education International
Case-study documentary analyses Antigua and Barbuda Antigua and Barbuda is a nation state comprising two populated eponymous islands, the uninhabited dependency of Redonda and dozens of small islets, all located in the Eastern Caribbean. Antigua is the larger and vastly more populated of the two main islands; this is reflected in the country’s political architecture, where Antigua is dominant. Its government’s website reports that efforts are being made to address this, with ‘a member of the Barbuda Council (which was formed in 1977) now sit[ting] as a member of the Cabinet of Antigua and Barbuda’ (Antigua and Barbuda’s Government Information and Services, 2021: unpaged website). In common with all Caribbean countries, Antigua and Barbuda’s history is one of colonisation, here, by the English. Antigua and Barbuda won full independence from the United Kingdom in 1981, and close relationships have since been established first with the United States, which has been ‘at the centre of Antigua economic and social life’ (Antigua and Barbuda’s Government Information and Services, 2021: unpaged website). More recently, the focus has moved to China; in his ‘speech from the throne’, the Governor-General of Antigua and Barbuda (Williams, 2021) remarked that ‘The People’s Republic of China has become our most important development partner, providing grants, expertise and loans’ (p. 8). Government expenditure on education per GDP is 2.4% (OECS Statistical Digest, 2013 cited in Ministry of Education Planning Unit, 2015). UNICEF (2017) reports that Antigua and Barbuda has made good progress in achieving the objectives for basic educational needs that were set out in the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. It has attained 99% literacy, largely through being one of the first Caribbean nations, in 1973, to introduce free, compulsory education. It oversees public and private early childhood education provision, which includes four state-owned centres (Ministry of Education Planning Unit, 2015). It is deemed to have achieved its ‘Education for All’ objective at primary level, although secondary has proved more challenging, owing at least in part to the relatively high numbers of unqualified teachers - a criterion of interest in this study. The Ministry of Education Planning Unit (2015) reports that in 2014–15, 19.4% of secondary-school teachers in the public sector 14
