LONDON, United Kingdom — More than one in two high skilled people in the Caribbean are migrating to other countries, says UNESCO’s 2019 Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report.
According to the report, which focused on migration and social policies pertaining to education and assimilation, those emigrating are more educated than those staying behind.
Manos Antoninis, Director of the GEM Report said: “Despite common political discourse, the more educated are the more likely to migrate, whether on the prospect of higher returns on their education, or because they are better able to respond to opportunities elsewhere”.
The report calculated the extent of brain drain for various Caribbean countries, showing that Guyana has lost 78 per cent of its skilled workers to emigration, while Grenada lost 71 per cent.
Specifically, Caribbean countries have experienced high teacher emigration in recent decades, not least due to active UK and US recruitment efforts.
For small island states, even small numbers of emigrating teachers can create significant shortages, as hard-to-replace mathematics, physics, science and computer science teachers are shown to be the most prone to move abroad, the report said.
It further highlighted that the number of migrant and refugee school-age children around the world today could fill half a million classrooms, an increase of 26 per cent since 2000.
