Editorial | TVET in education

The Government’s intention of upgrading the “deplorable” laboratories at Jamaica’s technical high schools is an obvious move in the right direction.

Indeed, decent labs can, and do, contribute greatly to the delivery of first-rate technical and vocational education and training (TVET).

But while this newspaper welcomes the initiative – announced on Tuesday by the education minister, Dana Morris Dixon, at the annual conference of the Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA) – we would have liked to have heard how, if at all, it fits into a broader plan for technical education in the secondary school system.

Put another way, Minister Morris Dixon missed an opportunity to lay out the administration’s views on the Patterson Commission’s recommendations for the overhaul of TVET education generally, and though belatedly, to open a much-needed public discussion on the issue. This discussion should also focus on the compatibility of the Patterson recommendations with the Government’s policy to launch six specialised STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) schools that will operate outside the regular education system.

LITTLE PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE

Unfortunately, like much else in the commission’s report, of which Dr Morris Dixon (before she was in government) was one of the authors, there is little public knowledge on what it said on, or proposed for, TVET.

The commission, led by the eminent Jamaican sociologist Orlando Patterson, was asked by Prime Minister Andrew Holness to provide a framework for the transformation of the island’s education system, to make it first for purpose for a 21st century world. Patterson turned in the report more than three years ago.

Although the Government says it is implementing the recommendations, the document, despite being tabled in Parliament, wasn’t sent to a parliamentary committee for deeper scrutiny.

Jamaica’s 15 technical high schools enrol around 20,000 students, or approximately four per cent of the population of secondary schools. Their performance, in common with large swathes of the education system, is patchy to poor.

Indeed, Dr Morris Dixon, the education minister for just shy of six months, says that they have been largely forgotten.

“One of the key things we are doing is building out our labs in our technical high schools,” she told the JTA conference, which, this year, focused on technology in education. “Our technical high schools have been forgotten for a long time, and, when you go there, their labs are in a deplorable state.”

Yet, as has been widely acknowledged, the Patterson Commission concluded that “Jamaica has a great need for TVET education”.

At the time of the report, with 29 per cent of the population being in the 15-29 age group, Jamaica was, as it still is, in the intermediate stage of a demographic transition – becoming greyer, but still with a substantial proportion of young and working-age people. Jamaica has historically low unemployment levels (3.5 per cent), however many young people were underemployed, in informal jobs, or outside the workforce and without skills.

“At the same time, the economy is greatly in need of skilled labour,” the report noted. “This mismatch is a major brake on economic development.”

FULLY INTEGRATED

Saying that there was a prejudice in the education system against vocational education and training, in comparison to traditional academic subjects, the commission suggested that “TVET should be fully integrated into the secondary school curriculum, recognising it as the ‘T’ of the highly promoted STEAM education, with the option to always move into more academic subjects, or to integrate both”.

Previous efforts at this kind of integration, because of how students were selected, have largely been seen, as the Patterson report put it, “as a streaming mechanism, rather than a mechanism that provides a pathway for success for all students”.

“There should be rebranding of TVET through a well-coordinated and aggressive marketing strategy to effectively promote TVET programmes as a viable career path for national development,” the report said, stressing that this had to be structured around “highly competent, qualified, motivated, flexible and creative teachers”.

The commission also called for a strong mechanism for measuring the performance of TVET institutions; the robust use of apprenticeship programmes; and, for people outside the formal school/education and training system, and mechanisms for “formal certification to informally trained practitioners who demonstrate full mastery of their skill”.

Minister Morris Dixon should grasp the opportunity to rekindle interest in the Patterson report – not just its observations of technical education. On everything.