(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana)     An all encompassing approach towards education will be the perspective from which Human Resource Development (HRD) will be discussed at the Twenty-fifth Intersessional Meeting of the CARICOM Heads of Government in St. Vincent and the Grenadines next week.

At the two-day meeting which begins on Monday (March 10), Human Resource Development and Information Communication Technology (ICT) will be two of the focal topics for discussion. The focus on Human and Resource Development comes following an agreement made at the Thirty-Fourth Regular Meeting of the Conference of CARICOM Heads of Government in July 2013 to devote a special session to this issue.  The decision came out of the Heads' recognition of the integral role played by Human Resource Development in the achievement of Economic Growth and Development regionally.

According to Director of Human Development in the Human and Social Development Unit at the CARICOM Secretariat, Ms. Myrna Bernard the purpose of the deliberations on Human Resource Development is to sensitize the Heads about the imperative to transform the regional systems for education in order to address the requirements of the current societal and labor market needs. She explained that all factors influencing the education system needed to correlate for there to be effective Human Resource Development. “You can’t fix Human Resource Development without addressing other areas such as socialization, employment systems, public sector reform and the needs of the current society,” she said.

The meeting is expected to examine ways of reshaping Caribbean Education while highlighting the importance of addressing capacity building for public sector reform in order to meet the demands of transformation in other sectors.

What will be considered is the transformation, direction and a holistic approach towards education in the Caribbean.  This approach would recognize that in order to address the shortcomings and challenges that have been seen in Human Resource Development, the entire system, including factors that influence what happens in the education system, would need to be addressed.