E.
Right to higher education
E/1982/3/Add.16
English Page 63
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(1) There are no post-secondary educational institutions in the country, and in view of the size of the Territory and the number of students who qualify yearly to pursue tertiary level studies, it would not be economically feasible for the Government to establish institutions at this level of education. The privately established and directed Turks and Caicos Business College provides tuition for school leavers to Ordinary level and Advance level standards.
Higher education is available, however, and accessible to all, on the basis of capacity to benefit, in the sense that each year the more promising young people are selected for training abroad under the sponsorship of donor aid agencies and funds provided by the British Government mainly through the Development Division in Barbados,
(2) Scholarships provided under the above schemes provide for the payment of both tuition fees and monthly subsistence allowances. In this sense, higher education may be said to be free, although recipients of such assistance are required to sign bonds committing themselves to work for the Government or in the country for a period of years upon their return. The Government is also pursuing the introduction of a student loan scheme which would to some extent relieve the demands on scarce training allocations and help those whose choice of course is not considered immediately relevant to developmental needs;
(3) The difficulties involved in making higher education equally accessible to all are:
(a) All students do not have equal opportunity to qualify for tertiary education since very strictly speaking all students do not have equal access to secondary education. The reasons for this have already been explained (see para.
(1) above;
(b)
The fact that the Government itself relies upon aid from training agencies, either metropolitan or international (the various agencies of the United Nations, Commonwealth Fund for Technical Co-operation etc.) for support for training,
(c) The fact that the actual number of people who qualify annually for higher education is too small to warrant the establishment of a tertiary level educational institution in the islands.
F.
Right to fundamental education
(1) Ten years ago the literacy rate for the islands was 75 per cent. It is believed that this must have risen slightly since then and a conservative guess would probably put it at 80 per cent. There is however no literacy programme designed to extend fundamental education to that 20 per cent of the population who might not be literate,
(2) The main difficulty affecting the implementation of this right is the Governments' inability to support education outside of the primary/secondary level;
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