Training

Schooling is compulsory and free of charge for children between the ages of 5 and 16 and virtually all children participate in the education. The education system is built on a British model.

There are both state and private schools. There are most private schools in the lower seven-year primary school and only a few in the five-year secondary school.

• COUNTRYAAH: Country facts of Grenada, including geography profile, population statistics, and business data.

There is a lack of premises, which often leads to overcrowded classrooms and a messy study environment. From the mid-2010s, the Government, with the support of a multimillion loan from the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), has begun work on renovating school buildings and building a few new schools and in other ways also tried to improve the quality of education.

A structural problem is that the education that young people receive is not properly adapted to the needs of the labor market. This has meant that many of those who get a higher education find it difficult to get jobs that match their skills.

In the capital Saint George’s there is an American-owned university, St George’s University, with, among other things, medical education. Saint George’s also has a technical vocational school, a teacher’s college and a higher education in agriculture and fishing. The University of the West Indies, a collaboration between English-speaking Commonwealth countries and territories in the Caribbean, has a branch in the capital. However, many grenadies apply to Jamaica, the United States and the United Kingdom for university studies.

FACTS – EDUCATION

Proportion of children starting primary school

95.2 percent (2016)

Number of pupils per teacher in primary school

16 (2017)

Reading and writing skills

98.6 percent (2014)

Public expenditure on education as a percentage of GDP

42.8 percent (2016)

Public expenditure on education as a percentage of the state budget

42.8 percent (2016)