 Hello, thanks for tuning in to Issues and Answers. I am Jolita Peter. And joining me on set is Dr. Claudia Louis, the Chief Planning Officer in the Ministry of Education, Innovation, Gender Relations and Sustainable Development. Welcome Dr. Louis. Thank you. The Department of Gender Affairs is facilitating a number of interviews with key sectors in St. Lucia, focusing primarily on the role of those sectors in advancing efforts towards sustainable development in the context of climate change and of course the important role that gender plays in the mix. It has been noted that advancing gender equality in the context of the climate crisis and disaster risk reduction is one of the greatest global challenges of the 21st century. First off, Dr. Louis, does the education sector gather disaggregated data by sex? Yes, we do actually. We collect, very importantly, we collect enrollment data by sex so we could know easily at every school the number of girls and the number of boys present. We also collect attendance data. For example, the schools submit to us monthly attendance and we compile so we can have a national picture of how students attend school based on sex as well. And we collect performance data, student performance data starting from the minimum standards level right through common entrance and CSEC data. All of that is disaggregated by sex. So it would be easy for us to look at the data and get a picture of how our boys are doing and how our girls are doing. Not only at the student level, but we also collect from our teachers and our staff. So we collect data based on staff. We know how many male and female teachers we have present and we would also look at the training, how many male teachers are trained, how many female teachers are trained. And this data we collect because, well, it informs our decision making, but it is also in keeping with some regional and international agreements that we have signed on to. So yes, we do have a very comprehensive method of collecting disaggregated data. Is that done on a periodic basis, how often is that done? Yes, annually we have a question, a standard question that we send out to the various schools and this is collected, completed at the school level and submitted to us. We would do the compiling and we generate what is called an annual statistical digest, which is available on the government website and it's also available from the Ministry of Education. So it has comprehensive data and we also subscribe to the OECS statistical digest. So the OECS digest would have data from the various islands, including St. Lucia. So you can get data on St. Lucia from these two documents. Okay, great. What are some of the issues and the topics in your sector specific to males and females? Yes, well, one of the most troubling issues, of course, would be performance. It's something that you hear every time we have the common entrance results being read out. Usually hair goes out performing boys and it starts from the minimum standards level. We note that there are disparities in the performance from that level and it continues through to the secondary level. So it is something that we have been monitoring and we have been discussing ways in which this can be addressed. Now I would say maybe surprisingly, but at the tertiary level, you find, say for example, Cape. We look at the Cape data that is also disaggregated by sex and although there is a disparity at the secondary level, you would find at the advanced level with Cape, then the genders perform almost equitably at that level. So it is something that we have to monitor the trends and always come up with strategies of how these trends can be addressed. So this next question is sort of personal, I know that you've been a teacher or did you say once a teacher, always a teacher, but you no longer in the classroom on a daily basis. What would you say is the most rewarding thing about working in the education sector? Yes, I would say it's the ability to empower people and change their lives because education from the classroom right up through education administration, you have the ability to influence lives and education, nothing is more empowering than giving a student an education. This is the way you move from poverty to being able to sustain yourself and your family. So it would be the ability to change lives. The public's expectations of the education sector, especially in this COVID pandemic environment seems to be intensifying. What would you say are some of the challenges experienced in the sector, particularly around this time? Okay, yes, it would be difficult to say only around this time. Some of what we see right now are really being magnified because of COVID. So say, for example, the underperformance of boys in our system. It is a trend that we have noticed even prior to COVID. When we look at also dropouts, St. Lucia has a very low dropout rate at the primary and secondary school. However, we note that boys are twice as likely to drop out as girls. And of course, you can extrapolate that and look at our crime rate, our crime situation. You have more males being deviant. Something else that we are grappling with, of course, is the shortage of resources because we are living in a developing country. And there are expectations on our sector that people have traveled to other countries, been exposed to other systems in other countries and developed countries, and then they come back. Of course, the expectations are there that we will match what's happening in the country. So we get criticized. So when I was in this jurisdiction, it was done like that. But we do not always have the resources. So we have to be mindful of our context and look at how exactly we can perform based on the context that we are in. Of course, that leaves room for innovation. There are situations where we do not always have to match the resources of the developing countries, the developed countries, sorry, but where we can use innovative methods to improve our system. Okay. I think we are due for a break now. But when we come back, we want to look at climate change and its impact on education in St. Lucia. Back in a moment. Welcome back to issues of climate change. Welcome back to Issues and Answers. My guest is Dr. Claudia-Louis, Chief Planning Officer in the Department of Ministry of Education. Just before the break, we will look at the public's expectations of the education sector in the context of the COVID pandemic. But at this time, we want to delve a bit into the effects of climate change on the education sector. Dr. Louis, the disruptive weather patterns, due to climate change, has had some negative impacts on the education sector as we have to deal with the destruction of infrastructure. So we look at schools, roads, bridges. And so it means that we now have school attendance being affected. But not only that, the various schools that serve as emergency shelters are themselves destroyed. What do you think is the magnitude of the impact of climate change in St. Lucia's education sector? Yes. Wow. It would be difficult to just give the magnitude, because it affects the sector on so many different dimensions. When we look at, we have the more extreme weather patterns. And we have flooding. We have heat, droughts, hurricanes. All of these would affect the society as a whole. So yes, it affects the school infrastructure, because we have an aging infrastructure. It affects the school infrastructure. However, it also affects the people who are part of the school system. So we have students where their parents are losing their livelihood. And of course, that would have an impact on the students' ability to attend school. So you look at students who are now at risk students and maybe dropping out because their parents are no longer earning an income. You have teachers who are also impacted and who have to be present at school. So they're looking after their families, but yet still there is, you know, that they would have to be present at school if school is to start running. And of course we look at learning loss where schools are being used as hurricane shelters. And if people are not able to move out of the shelters quickly enough, because one of the things in restoring normalcy is to have children back in school as soon as possible. So if you have a situation where there is damage in the community and the people are not able to return to their homes, then that of course impacts school. Looking at the COVID pandemic, there are some things that we adopted during the pandemic that maybe we can look at in terms of what happens after disaster. Say for example, we had the academic recovery program, which was run during the summer for some students who were felt were at risk and there was learning loss. So I think in the future we have to look at adopting some of these measures. We also have, well, training for teachers, professional development during the summer that we have instituted over the past few years. So we would have to definitely look at using the summer period for, not for everybody, but for situations where we feel it is needed. When we look at the infrastructure as well, we have to look at addressing some of the issues, the longstanding issues we have with our age in school infrastructure so that they are more resilient to some of the impacts of climate change. So I guess you may want to tell us briefly how does the sector respond to the impacts of climate change? I know in the past we have had to deal with some weather patterns. How was the sector able to bounce back so quickly? What are some of the experiences, what has some of the experiences taught you as a sector? Okay. Yes. Well, number one, we have to look at the human aspect and then we have to look at the infrastructure aspect. Looking at the human aspect, if we looked at COVID, for example, we were able to when students came back into school, even when you had just the grades. So for example, in COVID we noticed that we could bring back some students, even if everybody was not able to go in, but we bring back the critical grades. In this case we brought back the grade six students and the form five students. So that was a staggered opening and later on we brought the rest of the school. So this is one thing that we can look at after disaster if we're not able to bring back everybody. Of course support for the students. Normally we have a transportation subsidy program where we provide transportation to address students at secondary schools. After COVID we extended that service to include some primary schools because we noted that this was not, it was not normal times. So in cases of emergency we can make certain adjustments to deal with the situation that we have on ground. We, of course, when you look at the school infrastructure as well, we look at future planning. What do we do with the school infrastructure to ensure that we can continue. So we look at, for example, we look at solar, we look at water, rainwater harvesting, we look at energy efficiency just to ensure that our school buildings are more resilient. So what is safe to say that, I mean, I know every disaster comes with its own peculiarity, but I'm sure some of what, for example, the sector has had to do during the pandemic and even previous disasters will sort of, would I say there were lessons learned. So right now you could have gone back to what you did for dealing with the COVID pandemic. You could have gone back to some of what you did during these natural disasters and see how best we can, we can apply those, some of those experiences, those practices and of course to see how we can best deal with what we are going through now. Yes, so we have to always learn from, learn lessons from whatever experiences that we have. One important thing of course is the documentation and sharing of information. Something else that we know, the engagement of all our partners to bring on board, it's not just a matter of centralized decision making. So collaboration is important. Yes, so collaboration with our various partners. Even our students, right now we have recognized the importance of the student voice. So we have schools for students, but what are the students thinking? What are they feeling at this particular point? It's not only the adults. So really engaging our partners and working on our strategic plan. We have, for example, a continuity of education plan. We have to review, always have to come back to review and to see how best it can be improved. Okay, so we are due for another break, Dr. Lee, but when we come back, we want to look at this year's International Women's Day theme, which is gender equality today for sustainable tomorrow, looking at specifically what can be done within the education sector to respond it to the needs of both males and females. We are back. We are due for a break. When we come back, we will be speaking again with Dr. Lee. The world's climate is changing and that affects all of us. Storms are becoming increasingly intense. Periods of intense drought and heavy rain stress farm animals and destroy our crops. Higher average ocean temperatures kill our coral reefs and change the migratory patterns of fish. St. Lucia contributes only 0.0015% of global greenhouse gas emissions, but is doing its part, along with countries around the world, to reduce the emissions that are warming our world and changing our climate. These efforts are called mitigation. But decades of emissions have already changed the climate and the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere today will increase average global temperatures even more. We need to adapt. That is, do everything we can to prepare for and respond to the actual and expected negative effects of climate change and everyone has a role to play. We need to protect our crops, build homes that withstand storms and keep our drains and waterways free of garbage to help us recover or bounce back from climatic events. Learn more about the Government of St. Lucia's National Adaptation Plan and the steps you can take to protect yourself and your fellow St. Lucia's. Thanks for staying tuned to issues and answers. This year, International Women's Day was observed under the theme gender equality for a sustainable tomorrow. And we were looking at sustainability in the various sectors. And today, with me, is Dr. Louis, who is the chief planning officer in the Ministry of Education. Dr. Louis, I got untied a bit here. What can be done differently in your sector to better respond adequately to the needs of both male and female. We often hear that boys are wired differently. Girls and boys, they have different learning curves and, you know, what is it that can be done? And earlier, you mentioned that even during the statistics that it shows that the girls seem to be outperforming the boys in some areas. What do you think can be done to adequately respond to the needs of our females and our males? Yes. Well, in the education sector, we do look a lot at gender equality and gender equity and gender equality. So we do not necessarily teach boys differently. But looking at the worrying statistics, a lot of discussion. We have had a lot of discussion and we look at our boys' learning styles different than girls. Are the assessment methods that we are using favorable to girls where boys are disadvantaged? One area where we have put a lot of emphasis right now is education. And what we recognize was that many students were slipping between the cracks and they would go through mainstream schools and they would not be up to standard and perhaps these students would be promoted. But right now, a great emphasis has been put with the equip project. We have a special equip project and there is a lot of emphasis on training and awareness on special needs. So some of the boys who may have gone through the system, through the mainstream system, can now get more of the attention that they needed. We have, for example, a lot of discussion and the reason I say discussion is just because we are going through the process now of developing the education sector plan for the next five years. So within the next few months you would hear quite a bit of discussion on some of the plans and also there would be some public engagement on that. We, another case where gender, the great gender disparity is in the teaching profession. So we have quite a number of female teachers but a very small number of male teachers. And of course the discussion is are there anything that can be done to attract the male teachers to the profession? Because boys do not have the role models. In many cases we have single headed households and you find that boys may not have the male role models in their homes and they would look to the male teachers. So it would be a good thing if we have more male teachers in the system. So these are some of the issues that are being discussed and during the, I would say during the consultations for our education sector plan these would be brought to the fore and we would be taking opinions from members of the public, from our partners, from students, student councils, from parents, from teachers in jointly developing some strategies to address these problems. Because I was thinking the same thing. Why is it we have more female teachers than male? Is it because of the nurturing tendencies inherent in our females? Perhaps it would be good to start your research investigation but at some point, what is keeping the men away? Is it the males away? Is it that they are not as patient as the women who know? What is it? Yes, from international studies we do have some ideas but I would say we have not done recently, there has not been any local research on this. So this is one of the areas that we are encouraging. We have many students going abroad to study and they're also looking for education topics so these are one of the areas we are encouraging many people to do research in looking at the gender disparities both in teaching and in performance but we do have some indications from international and regional research as to what some of the reasons are. So I want to go back to climate change again and I think our children are great influencers and I am busy at the time when our children both males and females would lead at the forefront of advocacy for action on climate change. I think parents learn a lot from the children and when a child is convinced of something when a child is convinced that child sells the message especially the tiny thoughts. So in terms of I mean looking at sustainability in terms of climate change advocacy and action I don't know does your your sector have any plans or are you already working on something towards getting more students involved in selling that message because at the end of the day the education sector is affected society is affected because climate change affects every sector of society. Yes you are quite right as you spoke of that I can still recall lessons that I learned in primary school concerning deforestation and concerning saving our parents so I think we can all recall that so yes we have recognized the importance of having it in our curriculum. Lessons on climate change we have right now many different international agencies have organized for example different activities around climate change but as we go into we are going through a period of curriculum review from different levels at the OECS level and this is one of the areas we would definitely want to see greater emphasis paid on so as we wrap up I understand that we have just about two minutes left the sustainable development goes number four focuses on education and the aim is really to push equitability and inclusiveness so as we wrap up this interview your thoughts Yes well Saint Lucia has done very well if you compare and internationally we have done very well on access to education at the primary and secondary level we right now the emphasis is on early childhood education and tertiary education these are the areas where we really need to improve our access and these are part of our priorities right now we also have to be on the access the very basic level and beyond access we have to look at the quality of education just to ensure that every child who goes through our system comes out a meaningful member of society so we are looking at placing more emphasis now on the quality and also at the early childhood level Well that takes us to the end of our discussion today you have been listening to issues and answers and joining me to the onset was Dr. Claudia Louis who is the Chief Planning Officer in the Ministry of Education Innovation Gender Relations and Sustainable Development and today's discussion focused on the impact of climate change on the education sector in Saint Lucia Thanks for joining us until next time I am Julia Peter Thank you