In my last col­umn, I re­port­ed that Ja­maica was en­gaged in the re­form of its ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem and, in par­tic­u­lar, con­fer­ring a new val­ue on TVET (Tech­ni­cal Vo­ca­tion­al and Ed­u­ca­tion­al Train­ing) in the sys­tem.

I not­ed that the Re­form Com­mis­sion has pro­posed 12 rec­om­men­da­tions, and I re­pro­duced four of them with­out dis­cus­sion. In the present col­umn, I in­tend to say a lit­tle bit more on each of them and on more if space per­mits.

As back­ground, it is per­haps use­ful to know that Ja­maica has had TVET in a few of its schools set up for the pur­pose–for­mal TVET, you might say–and in train­ing cen­tres sup­port­ed and set up by skills-needy busi­ness­es and en­ter­pris­ing free­lanc­ing TVET ed­u­ca­tors to cater to the hordes of stu­dents who grad­u­at­ed from sec­ondary school with­out ei­ther aca­d­e­m­ic or prac­ti­cal cer­ti­fi­ca­tion–In a sys­tem of in­for­mal TVET.

Like Trinidad (and To­ba­go), Ja­maica has had thou­sands of stu­dents leav­ing school with­out any cer­ti­fi­ca­tion what­so­ev­er of any knowl­edge or skills, on­ly that Ja­maica’s fig­ures are no­tably greater than ours.

Be­cause of the huge per­son­al wastage of youth po­ten­tial and the equal­ly huge so­cial and eco­nom­ic costs to the is­land, es­pe­cial­ly as a re­sult of crime and un­der­de­vel­op­ment, the Ja­maicans want to fix things and fix them pur­pose­ful­ly. Hence the Re­form Com­mis­sion and its 12 rec­om­men­da­tions.

(By the way, the Com­mis­sion is head­ed by the Ja­maica-born and-reared em­i­nent Har­vard so­ci­ol­o­gist Prof Or­lan­do Pat­ter­son, au­thor of the ac­claimed ‘My moth­er who fa­thered me’.)

The first rec­om­men­da­tion—the most im­por­tant, I think–is: ‘TVET should be ful­ly in­te­grat­ed in­to the sec­ondary school cur­ricu­lum with the op­tion to al­ways move in­to more aca­d­e­m­ic sub­jects, or in­te­grate both.’

In an­oth­er part of the Com­mis­sion’s Re­port, it is fused with Rec­om­men­da­tion #2 to read: ‘TVET should be ful­ly in­te­grat­ed in­to the sec­ondary school cur­ricu­lum and re­brand­ed in a well-co­or­di­nat­ed and ag­gres­sive mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy to ef­fec­tive­ly pro­mote TVET pro­grams as a vi­able ca­reer path for na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.’

In the fu­sion of #1&2, they have kept the no­tion of in­te­gra­tion but added the no­tion of re­brand­ing with an ef­fec­tive mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy. The nar­ra­tive that fol­lows the state­ment of rec­om­men­da­tion fo­cus­es on the need to pro­mote TVET to the school leavers in sim­ple, ap­peal­ing lan­guage and on pop­u­lar me­dia.

The third rec­om­men­da­tion is: ‘High­ly com­pe­tent, qual­i­fied, mo­ti­vat­ed, flex­i­ble and cre­ative teach­ers are the back­bone of the TVET sys­tem…’ If suc­cess­ful change is to oc­cur in vo­ca­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion, (high­ly-trained and ed­u­cat­ed) in­struc­tors must be at the heart of the re­forms.

The in­struc­tors ‘should not on­ly have tech­ni­cal skills but must al­so un­der­stand their new role as a fa­cil­i­ta­tor of learn­ing, as op­posed to an in­struc­tor.’ The Re­port goes on to sug­gest that grad­u­ates from TVET pro­grams and skilled prac­ti­tion­ers from the world of work should be able to un­der­go oc­cu­pa­tion­al as­sess­ments as a pre­con­di­tion to en­ter­ing teach­ers’ TVET train­ing. The fourth rec­om­men­da­tion is: ‘Repo­si­tion TVET to fa­cil­i­tate and strength­en ca­pac­i­ties for en­tre­pre­neur­ial de­vel­op­ment…’

The nar­ra­tive un­der the rec­om­men­da­tion ob­serves that ‘[t]he role of en­tre­pre­neur­ship ed­u­ca­tion is main­ly to build an en­tre­pre­neur­ial cul­ture among young peo­ple who in turn would im­prove their ca­reer choice to­wards en­tre­pre­neur­ship.’ The tar­get of for­mal TVET should be to get the stu­dents/trainees to cre­ate their own jobs rather than seek­ing jobs in the for­mal sec­tor. I must note, how­ev­er, that it will take nore than en­tre­pre­neur­ship ed­u­ca­tion to cre­ate an en­tre­pre­neur­ship cul­ture.

The oth­er rec­om­men­da­tions fo­cus on the fol­low­ing:

In­creas­ing the hu­man and fi­nan­cial re­sources for dis­tance learn­ing in TVET.

Strength­en­ing the frame­work for mea­sur­ing per­for­mance in TVET in­sti­tu­tions.

Im­ple­ment­ing for­mal ini­tia­tives for agri­cul­tur­al vo­ca­tion­al train­ing, es­pe­cial­ly in rur­al ar­eas.

In­clud­ing in­di­vid­u­als with dis­abil­i­ties in for­mal vo­ca­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes.

Es­tab­lish­ing a Na­tion­al Skills Coun­cil.

Fa­cil­i­tat­ing the col­lab­o­ra­tion of TVET in­sti­tu­tions with busi­ness and in­dus­try.

Seek­ing out and at­tempt­ing to pro­vide for­mal cer­ti­fi­ca­tion to in­for­mal­ly trained prac­ti­tion­ers who demon­strate full mas­tery of their skill.

Un­der­stand­ing and vig­or­ous­ly pro­mot­ing TVET as a life­long learn­ing process.

Both the new Gov­ern­ment in To­ba­go and the na­tion­al Gov­ern­ment need to de­vel­op pol­i­cy with re­spect to what we should do for the many stu­dents who leave school with­out cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in any­thing and who face grim prospects in the mar­ket­place for jobs and en­tre­pre­neur­ship.

We’ve had con­ver­sa­tions on the val­ue of in­te­gra­tion, but they have not trav­elled very far, and in a world rife with eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ty and flu­id stan­dards, youth-friend­ly pol­i­tics has to be used to put our un­cer­ti­fied and un­skilled school-leavers on the path to self-de­vel­op­ment. The con­ver­sa­tions must be re­sumed for the sal­va­tion of these ‘non-aca­d­e­mics’. But I must note that their sal­va­tion is al­so the sal­va­tion of the so­ci­ety at large.