OECS Policy Makers To Have Access To New Digital Publication

Photo above: Director General of the OECS Commission, Dr. Didacus Jules. Photo credit: OECS.

CASTRIES, St. Lucia, Mar. 20, (CMC) — Policy makers in the nine-nation organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) will now have access to the first digital version of the OECS Education Digest, which was officially launched here, on Friday.

The OECS Education Development Management Unit (EDMU) unveiled the digital version of the document, which responds to the need for information to enhance planning, policy formulation and monitoring progress in education systems within the OECS.

The OECS Education Digest is also vital in assisting with the development of policy and strategies for further improving the region’s education system, as well as the calculating of indicators necessary to track progress towards targets and goals in the OECS Education Sector Strategy, Education for all and Millennium/Strategic Development Goals.

During Friday’s virtual ceremony, Dr. Wycliffe Otieno, the Chief of Education for UNICEF, commended statisticians, teachers, principals and other key players for putting the document together.

He described the documentation of the OECS Education Digest as a sparkling example of low cost, high impact use of resources by the OECS Commission’s Education Development Management Unit.

Director General of the OECS Commission, Dr. Didacus Jules, welcomed the first digital version of the OECS Education Digest as value added in making such vital information more easily available. He added, that there’s still more to achieve in making information more readily available for decision-making.

“The digitized OECS Education Digest could also help families in selecting a school of choice for their children, an option which is further facilitated through the free movement of people regime,” Jules said.

He said, policy-makers, investors, teachers, students, the general public, and journalists are among the many stakeholders who stand to gain, significantly, from the data in the OECS Commission’s Education Digest.

The OECS EDMU anticipates frequent traffic to the new edition of the Education Digest, because of the very useful data in areas such as financing education, student enrolment, repetition, pupil-teacher ratios, drop outs, examination results, country demographics and the structure of education systems in the OECS.

Marcellus Albertin, who heads the OECS Education Development Management Unit says, the Education Digest represents a deliberate effort to improve the use of data at a macro-level.

“This publication of a digital statistical digest signifies a further step at putting to rest the long-standing issue of the absence of data-driven decision in the education sector. While this is so, the region still has much work to do to entrench the use of data in decision-making at the national and school levels,” he said.