The Bahamas Must Improve its Workforce

by Andrew Allen

As anyone who has ever had broad dealings with both private and public sector employees in The Bahamas well knows, the challenges of producing a better workforce within the modern Bahamian cultural and educational setting defy the kind of talk politicians typically bring to the debate.

In short, we have a country following an economic model that relies almost exclusively upon human resource-based advantages, while in fact the weakness of those human resources is a standing joke even among ourselves.

In this, we offer a stark contrast with places like Singapore, Malaysia and even India, all of which have found niches in sectors that are not traditional in the developing world. They have all, to some extent, sought to leapfrog the industrial stage of development and dive straight into high-tech service industries, largely on the strength of their excellent education systems and high quality workforces.

In the case of India, its policymakers, mindful of the futility of competing head to head with neighbouring China in industrial production, instead tapped two competitive advantages that history has given them over the Chinese. Firstly, a large English-speaking population has allowed the country to diversify into such services as call centres, in addition to IT consultancy and related services.

Secondly, India’s tradition of good scientific education, coupled with a generally liberal educational environment, has allowed it to outpace not only China, but also Japan in the number of IT thinkers, creators and innovators it has produced. The imported (and outsourced) talent of Bangalore has been a large part of the success story of many a Silicon Valley IT firm.

Given the limited options of a small, attractive country that has good sand (i.e. bad soil) and consequently no great desire to begin selling bananas for a living, it is unsurprising that Bahamian leaders should talk the same talk as countries that have ‘leaped’ into services through the quality of their workforces.

But, while those countries that have realistically made this leap have emphasised the advanced training of their workforces in the sciences and information technology, even basic literacy and numeracy cannot be taken for granted among the Bahamian workforce. Several generations of politicians have failed to find the formula for producing the abundance and kinds of skills that this economy needs, even as they proudly trumpet the country’s status as one of the most service oriented economies on earth.

The result is a workforce that finds itself hemmed in at both ends, as low skilled immigrants compete for jobs at one end, and high skilled expatriates compete at the other. Without either, the whole thing would grind to a halt.

Education & Educators Must Be Fixed

It is clear that The Bahamian education system has failed to produce anything like the kind of workforce that is needed to run an economy like ours.

Partly, this reflects a political class lacking both the imagination and fortitude to introduce a modern, reformed curriculum and to guarantee minimum reasonable standards of performance among government funded schools.

But more than anything else, it is clear that many of the people that do the teaching are simply not up to the task. While our public schools have many fine teachers, examples abound of poor, shoddy and intellectually-stifling attitudes among many of those charged with producing our workforce.

For one thing, too many teachers continue to use our public school system as a forum for the propagation of their religious or social ideas for a truly conducive academic environment to take root. This columnist knows, for example, of at least one instance in which public school teachers objected to any reference to evolution in science classes.

Even more egregiously, the Tribune recently carried reports of teachers at one New Providence school punishing a group of girls for wearing supposedly “lesbian” footwear. Do we really expect children exposed to such mindsets to develop into the competitors of Bangalore, Singapore or Silicone Valley?

So there is no doubt that, on balance, the quality of individuals attracted to the teaching profession in The Bahamas must improve if any kind of leap forward in education is to happen.

It is also clear that, aside from the intellectual quality of some of the teachers, the public school system suffers from the same disorderly and undisciplined environment that too many students experience in their homes.

In this regard, much has been made of the comparative absence of males in the teaching profession and the consequences this has had on discipline. While it would be tempting to see this absence of male teachers in the context of the general out-performance of males by females in the professions in The Bahamas, the figures here are simply too extreme to treat glibly.

Since its inception, the College of The Bahamas’ school of education has graduated an average of one male pupil a year, as against around one hundred females. That startling ratio surely has something to do with the perceptions many Bahamians reserve for the teaching profession. Unfortunately, Bahamians seem to regard teaching as far less prestigious an occupation than accounting, law or banking.

Any attempt to ‘fix’ our education system simply must begin with a serious attempt to replace these outdated perceptions and to recruit a high quality of committed, educated professionals to the profession.

Making the Leap

We in The Bahamas know well (primarily because we keep reminding ourselves) that we are too small, too resource-poor and too well paid to compete convincingly in primary or heavy industrial sectors against our neighbours in this hemisphere. So we convince ourselves that our head-start in the service sectors is something that will last despite ourselves.

But it is useful to remember that, unlike India, Singapore or Malaysia, this country performed its ‘leap’ into service industries simply as a result of external factors and stimuli - it is located next to the US, has inherited some stabilizing institutions and is rather a nice place to visit and live.

These advantages are all very real and very compelling. But if our future is to consist of anything other than their steady erosion, our politicians need to get serious about shoring them up with a homegrown tradition of high skilled education and excellence in the workforce.

Comments

[Ralph J Massey]

This analysis by Andrew Allen is an excellent statement of the educational crisis in the Bahamas.

Ralph J Massey