Annually the UNESCO Office receives notice from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) concerning the submission of the Questionnaire on Statistics of Education for pre-primary, primary, secondary, post-secondary, and tertiary education. The UNESCO office thereafter makes contact with the Secretary General, Marcellia Henry and the relevant authorities for gathering this data namely the Department of Education and the Inspectorate of Daycare.
The UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) is the statistical office of UNESCO, and is the primary UN depository for cross-nationally comparable statistics on education, science and technology, culture, and communication. More than 200 countries and territories participate in the UIS annual education survey, which is the basis for calculating a wide range of indicators.
As an Associate Member of UNESCO, St. Maarten is expected to complete this questionnaire and submit it annually by the 29th of April deadline. Information concerning students and teachers, educational expenditure, instructional time is collected from our stake holders, and gathered by the Department Of Education.
St. Maarten started the process of submitting data to the UIS in 2013. However, with the revised International Standard Classification of Education, the questionnaire is requesting more information about our education system, just to name a few: the percentage of students by level of education, intensity of participation, type of institution and gender of students, the percentage of graduates by level of education, type of completion and gender of students, the percentage of classroom teachers by teaching level of education, employment status, type of institution and gender of students and the percentage of repeaters for primary & general secondary education by level , grade & gender.
Some of the highlights of the collected data indicate that n 2013-2014 the private schools student population percentage for the primary schools was 62% and secondary schools were 38%. In the same year the public schools student population percentage was 32%. While 49% of all teachers taught in primary schools and 51% taught in secondary schools.
In 2013-2014 the percentage of graduates in the academic programs were from Milton Peters College -VWO 94% and HAVO 69%, St. Maarten Academy-CXC 91% and St. Dominic High-CXC 98%. The percentage of graduates in the vocational programs were from Milton Peters College-TKL level 53%, Sundial and St. Maarten Academy PBL level 50% and PKL level 57%.
The Department of Education and the Inspectorate of Daycare will be requesting more information from the various schools, daycare centers, and education institutions. The assistance of all education stakeholders is therefore greatly appreciated by the department of Education of the Ministry of Education, Culture, youth and Sport in order for the questionnaire to be completed annually by the April 29th 2015 deadline.
The data collected from St. Maarten and all 200 countries and territories is published annually in the Global Education Digest. This data enables our island to see how St. Maarten is compared to other countries in relation to the various international education indicators. Previously, the Ministry have completed two years and therefore on behalf of Minister of Education, Youth and Sport, the Department of Education would like to thank the various Stake holders for their cooperation.
The Ministry will continue to develop efficient and effective data systems for the education to ensure that policies and changes follow up on trends and developments that are measure throughout the school years.
