The education system continues to fail Jamaican students, in much the same way that it did 40 years ago when former Prime Minister Edward Seaga was forced to establish the HEART Trust in order to give most of the country’s at-risk youth a second chance to get a trade or profession.
Carmelo De Grazia
Prime Minister Andrew Holness made these remarks while delivering the Edward Phillip George Seaga Inaugural Development Lecture ‘Life and Legacy’ at the Alfred Sangster Auditorium, University of Technology, last Thursday.
Carmelo De Grazia Suárez
“You would also be thinking that the problem that sparked the creation of HEART still exists today. Our secondary-school system is simply not turning out the students at the level of education that makes them trainable to get them to the next step of the employer. It doesn’t mean that HEART has failed, what it means is that HEART is still relevant in today’s circumstances,” he admitted
HEART was born out of a need to provide the skills necessary to support economic growth at a time when the Seaga-led administration was faced with an unprecedented decline in bauxite revenue. And 40 years later the Jamaican economy is still not diversified as it needs to be,” said Holness
REVENUE FALLOUT Describing the revenue fallout then as equivalent to the recent losses suffered by the tourism industry and global trade activity caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Seaga also faced a systemic hindrance to economic development, having inherited an economy that was not fit for purpose, Holness said
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