Hon. Andrew Holness at  first JFLL board meeting

 

Here is a verbatim transcription the charge by Minister Holness at the first meeting of the new JFLL Board

"I am very happy to be here today. I must apologize for the delay in selecting the board but I gave it careful consideration and deep thought to ensure that the composition of the board was one that could carry out the mandate with passion, conviction and a purpose. I am confident that I have finally found the right mix of persons who would carry out the mandate. I know in the Chairman we have an educator of the highest order, someone who is passionate about education and someone who is results-oriented - which is important and so I am confident that board will be doing wonderful things in the whole business of not just literacy but in creating the concept of lifelong learning in Jamaica.

In the entire transformation of education not much emphasis so far has been placed on lifelong learning. I know that persons who work in this agency may be of the view that the Ministry of Education is not paying the attention it deserves to this agency and in some ways it is truthful, to be fair, because the Ministry is focused right now on trying to manage Early Childhood, Primary and Secondary. I think that lifelong learning has a part to play, and my vision where I see lifelong learning is when we introduce our new policy towards an agenda for young persons who have been otherwise excluded or have been left out of the formal education system and who need attention of a different kind of education.

For example, our 16-18 agenda programme, which is a relatively new programme, is a skills-based programme. We would want to see the JFLL assisting us in dealing with the knowledge side of skills education. Even though we are focusing on the 16-18 year olds, that is; the population that should be in school; it would not be exclusive to that population only.

We would be trying to provide a service to anyone who would want to develop a skill but otherwise is illiterate or has a very low level of academic standing. The JFLL should start to focus its resources to support a skills-thrust. That is where we will make the significant impact we hope to make, if we can configure the resources that we have to support a skills agenda.

It is worrying to me that every year out of the education system, the cohort at grade 11 - 52,000 students thereabout, at least 38,000 leave the system, well some of them were never in the system to start with; having two subjects at CXC or less which means that they cant matriculate into anything. 7000 of them never even sat any exams and about 4,000 sat the exam and didn't pass anything at all. The magnitude of the problem is overwhelming but we have to start.

So many of these people who we hope to put into skills training wouldn't have the basic academic qualification or even basic education upon which to build a skill. So that is where I see your institution playing a significant role in the entire National Human Resource Development strategy, that of supporting a skills based agenda. That agenda will be carried out by 3 agencies - HEART - will provide us with the training and standard for skills training, the NYS - will provide us with the overall framework for an apprenticeship structure in Jamaica. In addition to that fact we plan to develop a Mentorship Act, we plan to formalize the process of mentoring.

Apprenticeship is important in a skills-thrust because you have to have on-the-job training to be meaningful. We are hoping that the NYS will manage. The schools will provide the infrastructure for the training. Our schools are under-utilized, many of them, as in they close at 2pm and classrooms are locked up. It would be good to have that cohort come back to schools maybe in the evening after they have done an apprenticeship somewhere on a programme that is run and structured by the NYS. where they can continue the knowledge part of their training.

So those who can't read and write properly, those who are not numerate or can compute that's where they would get their support and that is where I see the Jamaican Foundation for Lifelong Learning, that is where I see you would be supporting that thrust. It is a mammoth task but I think the nation has no other choice but to meet it, we have to cut off that flow of unattached, unskilled, unemployable young people. It is that pool out of which we get the persons who become criminals and deviant and blame the rest of the society.

So that is my direct charge, I plan to work very closely with your Chairman (Hyacinth Bennett) and Executive Director (Edward Shakes). We are in the development process of this policy, not yet finalized, I would say within another three months we should have a document which would be circulated for comment. So, thats my charge and I don't intend to detain you because I know you have very important business to continue."