More females than males in schools - Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation

[Anguillan newsboy]

Male students continue to be outnumbered at one of the island's tertiary institutions.

Principal of the Barbados Community College Dr. Gladstone Best, says the ratio of female to male students is two to one.

The college had a roll of four thousand, two hundred and eighty-eight students during the year 2006-2007.

Of this number just over three thousand were female while just over fifteen hundred were male.

Speaking during the BCC's graduation ceremony over the weekend, Dr. Best said that the institution was reaping the benefits of the continuous ***essment system.

Meanwhile Finance and Economic Development Minister in Anguilla Victor Banks has thrown the national spotlight on what he describes as the "astonishing divide in educational attainment between boys and girls" on the island and the wider Caribbean region.

"This is not just a problem in Anguilla, it is a problem in the wider Caribbean and indeed in many other parts of the world," said Banks in an address to launch the third biennial conference on National Development here on Monday.

Banks said it was revealed at the recently held University of the West Indies (UWI) consultation here that 80 per cent of 2006 batch of students entering the regional tertiary institution in Barbados are females.

"That is an astonishing statistic ... so when we talk about equity we have to talk about gender," Banks told persons attending the three-day conference.

The deputy chief minister said that if the authorities in Anguilla cannot figure out what is alienating the boys in the society "then the period ahead would be very challenging."

He told the gathering at the Teachers' Resource Centre that while it is possible to ensure equality of opportunities, it does not ensure equality of outcomes.

"There must be something fundamentally wrong if there is so wide a disparity in the performance of boys and girls at the high school level which then gets translated into entrant rates at universities," Banks said.

The minister said that education should be a vital road to empowerment in a meritocracy.

Consequently, according to Banks, if the island's education system and the wider social support system is not serving such a role then there is something fundamentally wrong which requires attention.