If you had a chance to browse this year’s Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate Examinations (CSEC) timetable for May-June you would have noticed that Portuguese is now among the subjects the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) offers.

Sixty-five students from Barbados and Guyana registered for the exam offered for the first time this year.The subject is a rarity in the Caribbean, where foreign language acquisition usually focuses on French and Spanish. According to information from Jamaica’s Ministry of Education, it was Belize and Guyana which recommended that Portuguese be added to the CXC curriculum based on their proximity to the South American countries, where Portuguese is spoken, chief of which is Brazil, with a population of over 200 million.According to the

Guyana Chronicle, the Government of Guyana embarked on a campaign of “Eliminating literacy, modernising education and strengthening tolerance” back in 2014. Former Minister of Education Priya Manickchand said that this was a keeping of a promise from the 2011 elections to strengthen foreign language teaching with special emphasis on Spanish and Portuguese.Jamaica’s Ministry of Education has said that, while it has not studied the specific gains to be had from pushing Portuguese as a second language across the system, it would not prevent individual institutions from incorporating the subject in their curricula if they so desire.“But our thought process is moving towards Mandarin as a second language, and we’re projecting that in another two years we will have that syllabus ready (for exams),” Chief Education Officer Dr Grace McLean told the

Jamaica Observer on Friday. The Asian language, she argued, is necessitated by the level of Chinese investment and involvement in the country and the region.“As a region, we signal to CXC areas that we think are critical to our development, and Jamaica has recently worked with CXC in developing some new generation subjects, including digital animation, logistics and supply chain management, and green engineering, which are areas the country is seeking to develop,” she explained.Assistant registrar syllabus and Curriculum Development at CXC Annette Piper told the

Career and Education that Mandarin syllabi are being developed for both the lower secondary level — Caribbean Certificate of Secondary Level Competence (CCSLC) — and CSEC, with teaching projected to start in September 2018.When asked why Portuguese was added to the Caribbean curriculum, Piper said: “Traditionally, foreign language experience in primary and secondary schools has been restricted to the teaching and learning of French and Spanish. At the lower secondary level, the council offers the Caribbean Certificate of Secondary Level Competence (CCSLC) French and Spanish, CSEC French and Spanish in the fourth and fifth years of secondary school and CAPE (Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination) French and Spanish at the post-secondary level. At the tertiary level, the language experience is more varied. Research has revealed that there is an increase in Latin American Studies programmes and these require some knowledge of Portuguese, as well as Spanish.“And so, in light of the current state of the foreign language development in the region, the nature of existing programmes, an understanding and appreciation of the selective, demanding and constantly changing nature of Caribbean development in the 21st century, it is suggested that CXC develops a CCSLC syllabus in Portuguese.”Piper added that Caribbean students who acquire another foreign language will have expanded their knowledge of the world and the cultures around them. And there are huge opportunities for the region based on trade with Brazil, which at present has the sixth strongest economy in the world, and a forecast of becoming the fourth strongest by year 2050.“Learning Portuguese will make small societies in the Caribbean more marketable for the increasing number of opportunities available to them given the proximity of Brazil to the Caribbean region,” Piper reasoned.In addition to Brazil, Portuguese is the official langauge in Portugal, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Angola, and São Tomé and Príncipe. It also has co-official language status in East Timor, Equatorial Guinea and Macau. Based on proximity, Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay, Venezuela and Bolivia offer it a second language in schools.