Prime Minister, the Most Hon. Andrew Holness, says the Government will be placing greater emphasis on investing in the education sector.
“We are now at a point where we have to give greater focus to make the investment in the things that matter to you now and for the future. We have to make greater investment in our human resource development; we need to make greater investment in education and training,” he said.
Mr. Holness emphasised that “Jamaica’s future… has always been and will continue to be even more so dependent on the quality of the human resources that we produce”.
He was speaking during Jamaica College’s orientation session for first-year students on Monday’s (September 2) start of the 2024/25 academic year, at the institution’s Old Hope Road campus in St. Andrew.
Mr. Holness said the Government is also looking to pursue investments designed to effect radical transformation of the education sector.
“The education system, at an early stage in the lifecycle of our children, would have allocated life chances by virtue of their performance on an exit exam. At some point, the nation has to ask itself ‘is this the fairest way of distributing quality education space?’… because essentially what we do is to create a two-tiered education system. If you really want to change [this], this cannot be the way in which we move forward in the future,” he stated.
Noting the Government’s strategic approach to improving the education sector, Mr. Holness said the recent addition of 100 new compressed natural gas (CNG) buses to the Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) fleet will provide adequate, safe and reliable public transportation for students, which, he pointed out, is a critical part of the equation.
The JUTC rolled out a total of 270 buses for the first day of school.
“It is things like this that the Government is focusing on… getting more buses in the public transportation system. With the structure of persons that we need to target for support, like subsidies for students going to school [and] the elderly, this is a way in which we reduce the cost to you, the parent, [and other commuters],” Prime Minister Holness said.
