Budget BDS$500 million System type National | Primary languages English Total 99.7 | |
Min. of Education & Human Resource Dev. Hon. Ronald D. Jones MP Compulsory education 1890(Education Act of 1890) | ||
Education in Barbados is based primarily on the British model.
There are presently:
In addition, there is 1 public senior school
Academic Term
The Barbadian school year is fashioned after the British system, and as such, it follows a scheduling with three terms per school year.
The first term begins the second week of September and continues for 15 weeks adjourning in mid-December excluding one week for Mid Term Break in Mid-October. The second Term begins in the first week of January and continues for 12 weeks ending the end of March. The final Third Term begins mid-April and continues for 11 weeks until the end of June.
The School Holiday period is 9 to 10 weeks long from the end of June until the first week of September.
Education is provided free of charge and is compulsory between the ages of 5 and 16, and attendance is strictly enforced. In 1991, the gross primary enrollment rate was 90.4 percent.
It was reported that Barbados has spent roughly US$15 billion on Education since Independence in 1966. In 2006 during the inaugural Cecil F. deCaires Memorial Lecture at the Frank Collymore Hall, the former Central Bank Governor Sir Courtney Blackman remarked that between 1966 and 2000 successive Governments (of Barbados) had spent US$15 billion on education costs – "a remarkable investment for such a small state".
In 2009, Ronald Jones as the Minister of Education and Human Resource Development said the Barbados government spent $290 million to upgrade the schools with information technology. Given this Jones said the ministry would be entering a grading processes for schools on their usage of the technology using a scale of 1 to 6.