Caribbean Teenagers
Confidence building and exposure to a new environment could encourage more Caribbean teenagers to further their education.
African teenagers are more likely to go to university than their Afro-Caribbean counterparts according to a survey by the Economist.
Dr Tony Sewell is the founder of Generating Genius, a charity that supports talented young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to realise their potential in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths.
He explains the problem with Caribbean pupils lacking confidence. “Caribbean kids don’t have the confidence to actually ask for help, to interrogate their teacher and find out more. They’re content with the bare minimum.”
As part of one of their programmes, young people are taken to Cambridge University to live the life of a student for three to four days. The former teacher believes that this is ‘good mental training’ as it takes the attendees out of their comfort zone.
However, Sewell does believe that the education system can help. “Schools need to compensate for this gap with adapting different types of tuition for different students, it could be group, peer or one-to-one mentoring. We’re currently experimenting with this to see how it helps.”
