It has been observed that the activities of international financial institutions, like the World Bank, have been 'steering social policy in a neoliberal direction' (Kuehn 2008: 57) and structural adjustment programmes gave the Bank the edge it needed to assert its policy dominance and influence over the education sector in developing countries (Jones 1992: 141). Barbados was no exception to this policy. Through the provision of financial aid and adjustment loans the Bank had been able to reform these countries’ education sectors along neoliberal lines (Weiner 2008: 256). Its education investment programmes complemented its structural adjustment programmes. The developing world’s education sectors, therefore, became a prime target for neoliberal proponents since this sector received a significant part of their governments’ expenditure. The majority of this spending went towards salaries, and most structural adjustment programmes required a reduction in public deficits by cutting the governments’ wage bills (Carnoy 1992: 2). It has been argued that through stabilisation and structural adjustment programme lending, the
156 World Bank was able to exert a policy influence 'far greater and more intense than is possible through free-standing projects’ (Jones 1992: 141).
These policies came at the worst time for developing countries since the world economy required more not less investment in education, especially at the secondary and postsecondary levels, to cope with the constant changes in the global economy (ILO 1996:3). The International Labour Organisation (ILO) considered the adjustment policies promoted by the Bank and the Fund to be harmful to developing countries’ human capital given that ‘an improvement in labour force skills was vital as new goods, services and production processes are needed to compete and stimulate growth’ (ibid: 5).
While acknowledging that World Bank’s policies have at times had a negative effect on the social sectors, Jones (1992) reminds us that ‘the World Bank first and foremost is a bank and requires analysis as such’ (Jones 1992: xiv). Of its two primary functions of banking and development assistance ‘the former shapes the latter’ and a country’s ‘education sector could not remain innocent of the Bank’s overall responses to the twin crises of debt and recession’ (Jones 1992: 243). While Jones' perspective is understandable, the Bank still cannot divorce itself from its responsibility to acknowledge the impact of its policy prescriptions simply because its fundamental purpose is to provide financing. It has also established itself as a development and technical advisor, and for this it must be held accountable.
With neoliberalism asserting itself as the dominant economic paradigm in the 1980s the World Bank’s education policy shifted, and nowhere was this more noticeable than in its 1980 Education Sector Policy Paper. Here the Bank’s education investment programme complemented its structural adjustment programme. In the Education Sector Policy Paper, the Bank announced
157 that for middle-income countries (like Barbados), ‘emphasis would be placed on development for increasing sophisticated economies, improvement of the quality and equity of first level education, and the development of secondary or higher levels of education’ (World Bank 1980: 11). The paper noted that ‘internal efficiency will be stressed in lending to all countries, and measures to improve it will be required for support of further efforts to expand the system’ (ibid). It was further emphasised that efficiency would be improved by increasing the use of staff by ‘raising the teaching load and ratio of student to staff, and by eliminating unnecessary diversity or duplication of courses’ (World Bank 1980: 72).
These new developments and policy shifts in the direction of neoliberal considerations had strong implications for the implementation of the First World Bank Education Project in Barbados. Through the project implementation process, several of these issues came to the fore as the government struggled to come to grips with these neoliberal efficiency measures. There was pressure to reduce education expenditure, especially on teachers’ salaries; pressure to divert spending away from teachers’ salaries to other learning and teaching resources such as textbooks and instructional material; and, once again, demands to increase the student to teacher ratios as a strategy to employ less teachers.
The World Bank, like the IMF, was of the view that the Government of Barbados expenditure was increasing largely because of the immoderate size of the public service and the large wage increases (World Bank 1978; 1990; 1991). According to the World Bank, 'because such a large proportion of the Government's budget was spent on education, it was important to improve the cost-effectiveness of formal education' (World Bank 1991: 1).
158 The continued growth of the public sector, especially in the teaching service, was of great concern to these funding agencies. This was so because not only did 20 per cent of Barbados' recurrent expenditure go to the education sector, but 85 per cent of that was allocated to teachers’ salaries (World Bank 1990). Details of the government's expenditure on this sector can be found at appendix 1 which highlights the various areas where funds were allocated in the education budget and the amounts that were approved. For the Bank’s part, this huge sum would have been justified if the returns on such a large investment were evident. But instead, the data showed that the failure rate for the Common Entrance Examination (11+) in primary schools was 30 per cent and 50 per cent in the secondary schools for the school leaving examinations (O'levels and A'levels).
On this matter, policymakers were in agreement with the international financial institutions, apportioning blame squarely on the shoulders of teachers for poor student performance, particularly at the secondary level. Commenting on this matter a former senior official suggested that one of the main reasons for these failures was the teachers unions' aversion to having their members continually assessed and evaluated (former Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Education interview 2012). It was felt that with evaluation the quality of teaching would be improved, thereby having a positive effect on overall student performance and the examination results' (ibid). Prime Minister Tom Adams also subscribed to this view, and he openly labelled the quality of teaching within the service as being below par (Barbados Advocate October 2nd, 1982).
Of course, this anti-teacher rhetoric affected the teachers’ morale, especially when they were publicly discredited by politicians and perceived as merely self-interested. However, these claims were not only challenged as baseless and without merit, but dismissed by their unions
159 (Bascia 2008: 102). Teachers have been constantly blamed for poor educational outcomes (ILO 1996); they are regarded as responsible for student failure and the decline in educational standards. Furthermore their unions were classified as obstacles to education reforms and improvement (ILO 1996: 12; Carnoy 1992: 2). Blaming teachers shifts the responsibility from the government to their unions and also undermines the public’s support for teachers (Carnoy 1992: 20).
In light of this, the World Bank was advocating for a shift in expenditure away from teacher salaries to education resources and materials and the maintenance of school infrastructure. Its officials noted, nonetheless, that there was reluctance on the part of the government to confront the situation because of the militancy of the Barbados Union of Teachers. They posited the view that 'there is a serious political difficulty in improving efficiency because of the interest of the Barbados Union of Teachers' (World Bank 1991: 12). The union was also accused of deliberately trying to increase its membership by demanding the 'creation of senior teaching positions with partial teaching loads, the reduction of the number of teaching hours per day for all teachers (and the) introduction of remedial classes' (ibid).
Barbados teachers’ unions were perceived as prohibiting efficiency and the reallocation of education financing to other areas of the school (World Bank 1986: 12). This was clearly highlighted by the Bank’s education sector staff in their loan proposal for Barbados’ First World Bank Education Project. In that document, which was submitted to the Bank’s executive directors, it was claimed that ‘the major risk (to the project) is that there may initially be considerable resistance by teachers’ unions and parents to Government targets for an economic class size and teacher-student ratios’(World Bank 1978:14).
160 Unions are often portrayed as anti-growth, anti-development and as irrelevant outdated institutions from a previous era (Weiner 2008:252). They are said by their critics to be largely responsible for influencing the government's spending priorities (ibid). By weakening the teachers’ unions, unpopular education reforms could become more probable (Carnoy 1992: 21). Weiner (2008) asserts the view that the union’s institutional power and collective voice are perceived by neoliberals as a ‘threat to the neoliberal project' (Weiner 2008: 252). This collective action often contradicts the neoliberal principles of individualism, individual achievement, performance and competitive success (ibid).
Another area of ongoing contention between the World Bank and the teachers' unions was the Bank’s insistence on larger class sizes, despite the unions’ resistance to this policy from when the project was first designed in the 1970s. Bank officials continued to stress that with the Barbados education system, 'the main problem was the comparatively small size of classes and uneconomical teacher to student ratios' (World Bank 1981:1). From their perspective, an increase in the student to teacher ratios, through larger class sizes, would reduce the government's recurrent expenditure on this sector by BDS$10 million annually (ibid). As demonstrated in table 6.4 Barbados’ student to teacher ratios were below the 1:30 ratio of middle-income countries. It reveals that over the period 1979 - 1989 the student to teacher ratio declined from 1:24 to 1:18 in primary schools and from 1:21 to 1:18 in the secondary schools.
Table 6.4 Barbados Teacher to Student Ratios 1979-1989
Year 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 Primary Schools 1:24 1:23 1:22 1:23 1:23 1:22 1:20 1:20 1:19 1:18 1:18 Secondary Schools 1:21 1:20 1:19 1:19 1:19 1:19 1:20 1:18 1:18 1:18 1:18 Source: World Bank Project Performance Audit Report, 1991
161 Faced with what they perceived as continuous threats and attacks on their professionalism, the teachers' unions used their strength to openly challenge both the World Bank and the Government of Barbados. This was evidenced from the emergence of a hitherto unseen type of militancy and a wave of well-supported industrial action (see below) that served to strengthen their hands and provide impetus to their cause. As a result, with a sympathetic public on their side, they were able to successfully oppose IMF proposals by maintaining their original class sizes (although some classes sizes further decreased), increasing the size of the teaching service and obtaining wage increases despite objections from the IMF and the World Bank. In the next section these issues are analysed in greater detail.