E/1982/3/Add.16
English Page 62
C. Right to primary education
(1) The Education Ordinance and the Board of Education Regulations provide for free and compulsory primary education in Government-operated schools for all children over the age of five and under the age of fourteen years. There are no special provisions relating to specific groups as there is no discrimination between groups of whatever nature as far as the right to primary education is concerned. Private schools charge nominal fees;
(2) All children in the Territory are covered by primary education, in the sense that the children of every community have relatively easy access to a primary school and attendance of school age children is compulsory;
(3)
Primary education is completely free,
(4) It would not be too much to say that the right to primary education has been very largely realized in the Turks and Caicos Islands.
D. Right to secondary education
(1) There are secondary schools in the islands of Grand Turks, South Caicos and Providenciales. There is a junior secondary school in North Caicos. In these communities, therefore, secondary education is available and accessible to everyone, admisssion being on the basis of merit alone.
In islands where there are no secondary schools the Government provides deserving students with financial assistance in the form of a monthly grant for the purpose of helping to meet the expense of boarding with families, relatives or friends, while they attend the secondary school nearest to their homes. This is also done for students who complete successfully the junior secondary school course at the North Caicos Junior Secondary School;
(2) The Turks and Caicos High School in Grand Turk has a technical and vocational wing, and there are plans to extend these facilities to the school in South Caicos;
(3) Secondary education in Government-operated secondary schools is completely free. Furthermore, in the one privately established and directed secondary school in the Islands (the Providenciales High School) the Government contributes to students' tuition fees in the amount they would have received in boarding assistance were they attending the secondary school in South Caicos or the one in Grand Turk;
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(4) The main difficulty affecting the realization of this right is the fact that the islands are geographically scattered. In the Caicos Islands which form a more contiguous land mass than the Turks Islands, the settlements are scattered, the road system is still rudimentary and public transportation is non-existent. order, therefore, to make secondary education equally available and accessible to everyone, it would be necessary to reproduce in each island/settlement identical facilities on decreasing scales an exercise which would be impractical and prohibitively expensive.
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