The Gender and School Achievement in the Caribbean Project is the result of many years of collaborative work between the authors. The ideas which lead to the formal project proposal began in Trinidad during the mid 1980s. At that time, Vena Jules and Peter Kutnick were members of the Faculty of Education at the University of the West Indies. A common interest was established in consideration of the relationship between children and their teachers and a number of small scale research projects were planned to overcome the dearth of research about the effects of schooling in the Caribbean. Our original research showed widespread success of girls in schools - an unexpected result at the time when compared to similar research undertaken in developed and developing countries. The original findings lead to the current research project which extends the study to provide in-depth observations of classroom processes and surveys of educational achievement across the Caribbean.
We would like to thank the Department For International Development (DFID) for funding of the research project (contract 94 3480a). Although this paper is issued by the DFID, the views expressed are entirely those of the authors and do not represent the DFID's own policies or views. Any discussion of the content should therefore be addressed to the authors and not to the DFID.
Finally, we would like to thank those who have worked with and supported this research project. Kim Lin Lee Yaw and Dilkes Pierre collected data in Trinidad. Coreen Kennedy, Joan Blackett and Workeley Braithwaite collected and collated data in Barbados. Cools Van Loo oversaw and collated data in St Vincent. Our work with the DFID was supported and encouraged by Dr Gren Jones and Mr Terry AUsop, with further administrative support from Graham Larkbey.
