Ja­maica's ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness will re­place Bruce Gold­ing as prime min­is­ter from Sun­day. Hol­ness, 39, who has re­ceived the back­ing of the par­lia­men­tary group of the rul­ing Ja­maica Labour Par­ty (JLP), was born on Ju­ly 22, 1972. He at­tend­ed St Cather­ine High School and lat­er grad­u­at­ed from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Mona cam­pus, where he spe­cialised in de­vel­op­ment eco­nom­ics. Hol­ness served as ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor in the Vol­un­tary Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Up­lift­ing Chil­dren from 1994 to 1996, then joined the Pre­mi­um Group of Com­pa­nies and func­tioned as a spe­cial as­sis­tant to Ed­ward Sea­ga, for­mer leader of the JLP and for­mer prime min­is­ter.

In 1997, Hol­ness be­came Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for West Cen­tral St. He was groomed by Sea­ga. Be­tween 1999 and 2002, he served as Op­po­si­tion Spokesman for Land and De­vel­op­ment and in 2002 was asked by Sea­ga to serve as the Op­po­si­tion Spokesman for Hous­ing. In 2005, he was trans­ferred to shad­ow the ed­u­ca­tion port­fo­lio, a role he per­formed un­til 2007 when he was ush­ered in as ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter, af­ter the 2007 gen­er­al elec­tions. As ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter, Hol­ness has re­ceived com­men­da­tion on his far-reach­ing poli­cies such as his tough stance on se­cu­ri­ty and safe­ty in schools, his push to achieve 100 per cent lit­er­a­cy at the pri­ma­ry lev­el and his em­pha­sis on ac­count­abil­i­ty at all lev­els of the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.

How­ev­er, he has had some­what of a rough time with one of the key stake­hold­er groups in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, the Ja­maica Teach­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (JTA) which has, on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions, ar­gued that he doesn't en­gage in con­sul­ta­tions be­fore mak­ing cru­cial de­ci­sions. In par­lia­ment, Hol­ness is the leader of gov­ern­ment busi­ness and serves as the chair­man of the Pub­lic Re­la­tions Com­mit­tee with­in the JLP.