The main thrust of public education in…

The main thrust of public education in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries will nevertheless come not from the local government but rather from the religious community.

Competing Protestant groups—the Anglicans, the Baptists, the Moravians, the Wesleyans, and the Presbyterians—and the Jesuits operate a vast system of elementary and secondary schools.

At the end of the nineteenth century, the churches will monopolize elementary education in Jamaica and Barbados and will run a majority of the primary schools in Trinidad, Grenada, and Antigua.

The most outstanding secondary schools—St. George's College, Kingston College, Jamaica College, Calabar High School, and York Castle High School in Jamaica; Harrison College, Codrington College, Lodge School, and Queen's College in Barbados; and Queen's College, St. Mary's College, and Naparima College in Trinidad and Tobago—as well as the principal grammar schools in the Bahamas, Antigua, St. Kitts, and Grenada owe their origins to the religious denominations.

Each territory has a board of education, which supervises both government and religious schools.

Government assistance will slowly increase until by the middle of the twentieth century the state will eventually gain control over all forms of education.

Although far from perfect—most colonies still spend more on prisons than on schools—public education will fired he ambitions of the urban poor.