HVGIQ: Turks and Caicos Islands

The Turks and Caicos Islands is classified as a British Overseas Territory (other examples are Bermuda and the Cayman Islands). It has a population of 32,000, and its demographics are 88% black and 8% white. Like many small Caribbean territories, the Turks and Caicos Islands enjoy a high standard of living fueled by finance and tourism.

Lynn & Vanhanen do not have a study for this territory and, with the exception of Bermuda, they don’t include British Overseas Territories in their full dataset of estimated scores.

In this short post I summarize one study for the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Chris Berry (1997 ) describes the results of a British government funded school program intended to raise student performance in the territory. As a barometer of the program’s efficacy, the Mcleod Gap Test, a measure of reading comprehension, was administered to students each year from 1993-1995. The eleven-plus exam was also administered, and there was a correlation of .90 for performance on the two tests. Baseline scores were collected for 150 children in the 3rd grade. Since the original Mcleod norms are inaccessible, I use the published Australian norms for comparison (Elkins, 1971 ).

In relation to these norms, Turks and Caicos Islands schoolchildren had an IQ of 89.4.

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