St. Kitts and Nevis Pioneers Education for Sustainable Development with UNESCO Support
St. Kitts and Nevis National Commission for UNESCO (BASSETERRE, St. Kitts) – With technical support from UNESCO, the UN’s specialized education agency, St. Kitts and Nevis is set to become one of the few Small Island Developing States (SIDS) to integrate Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) into its national curriculum beginning September 2026.
According to Dr. Tricia Esdaille, Senior Assistant Secretary in the Ministry of Education and lead for the national ESD initiative, the Ministry’s Curriculum Development Unit has strengthened ESD content across the curriculum. A pilot of the enhanced curriculum will launch in the 2026–2027 academic year, with Grade 3 and Grade 5 students among the first beneficiaries.
Plans are underway to scale ESD across all secondary schools before 2030. The approach will prioritize experiential learning focused on food security, green energy transition, sustainable industries, social protection, and sustainable communities—ensuring ESD moves beyond theory into practice.
ESD will be embedded from Grades 3–6 and within the secondary Social Sciences programme for Forms 1 and 2, including History, Social Studies, and Geography. Following three years of UNESCO-guided work to establish a national ESD policy framework and learning outcomes, courses will be aligned to the environmental, social, and economic dimensions of sustainable development. Teaching will emphasize learner-centered, action-oriented pedagogies such as inquiry-based and project-based learning.
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education, Hon. Dr. Geoffrey Hanley, welcomed the milestone: “The successful conclusion of the ESD project is one of three UNESCO flagship projects being implemented in St. Kitts and Nevis, alongside the scaling up of teacher qualifications through remote training with the Open University of Tanzania, and the strengthening of biodiversity credentials at the St. Mary’s Biosphere Reserve in Cayon.”
The Ministry benefited from a UNESCO ESD Initiative funded by the Government of Japan. This support enabled the recruitment of two leading UNESCO ESD experts who advanced a “whole institution approach” through the development of a national ESD policy, strategy, curriculum integration framework, and teacher capacity-building programme.
