ABSTRACT
Due to the formative influences of politics and language on the development of education systems, their evolution and related stocks of literature tend often to appear relatively discrete. In the Caribbean region this is illustrated by the several legacies of the colonial powers in respect of education, there being Hispanic, Francophone and Anglophone sets of countries and traditions which have been interrelated or disconnected at different times over the past five hundred years. In the non-Hispanic West Indian Islands and Belize, denominationalism has created a kaleidoscopic quilt, the composition of which contributes strongly to the idiosyncracy of both island society and the schooling that helps to regulate it. In the era of European colonialism, groups of metropolitan-related Caribbean and Central American states, while being dependent, did belong to networks of culturally related political systems and their attendant educational philosophies and provisions.
