Senator Alex Brown says Antigua and Barbuda faces a serious challenge in mathematics education and is urging the government to move beyond spending levels and focus on targeted solutions to improve student performance.
Speaking during the 2026 Budget Debate in the Upper House, Brown said the country continues to lag behind regional averages in mathematics, despite education receiving a significant share of government funding.
“There’s obviously a problem with maths, and we need to find a solution,” Brown told senators. “I don’t have the antidote solution, but there has to be a focus.”
Brown said data from Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) results over several years show Antigua and Barbuda performing below regional benchmarks. He noted that while the Caribbean average hovers around the 40 percent range, local results remain significantly lower.
“I said within the Caribbean we were in the 20s and the average was in the 40s,” he said, responding to a point of order during the debate.
While acknowledging that the Ministry of Education receives substantial budgetary allocations, Brown said funding alone is not enough if outcomes do not improve. He called for targeted interventions, including support for teachers and reforms aimed specifically at mathematics instruction.
“The ministry would have gotten a huge chunk of the budget,” Brown said. “So I’m saying that some effort should be made — whether it’s our teachers, maths teachers, whether they need training or whatever it is — but just have a focus.”
Brown stressed that mathematics and English remain critical subjects for students seeking higher education opportunities.
“Maths and English are the two subjects that are very much needed for university matriculation,” he said. “So we need to focus and make sure that where maths is concerned, we do much better.”
He said the issue should be addressed as a national priority, noting that education outcomes directly affect students’ future prospects and the country’s long-term development.
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It started with the UPP. RAG-TAG lowered the pass mark. Cooks Pond Water can’t call figures “WHY ARE YOU LAUGHING? I’M GIVING YOU THE FIGURES”
“zero, zero, zero, zero….”
All that money that went to education in the budget is for one main purpose. PM Browne’s university at Five Islands.
He does not care about the state of the schools nor the poor performance of students in maths. He just wants to get money to expand the FIC so he can show off to the other PMs he meets when he attends conferences.
To help the students with math problems, the government should employ, and I mean employ, hire, a lot of retired math teachers to help fix the problem which goes way back to grade school. They should be paid very well, not with gift certificates, but with good hard cash. Even some of the present math teachers should attend those classes.
All of us can hope that the day will come when this government comes to realize that funding education does not start with fancy buildings and university degrees.
But that would be asking for too much from them.