MY last column attempted to evaluate a suggestion by Ruel Reid that was intended to help improve Jamaica's failing education system. I provided some short-term suggestions that were different but that have been brought up in the past.

After that column I decided to continue a focus on education and asked a simple question on Facebook and Twitter: 'Should the Jamaican Government have different subsidies for different subjects at the tertiary level?'

This question is not new, even though it may be new to some people. The answers were as expected, supporting targeted subsidies for subjects important to national development. One response stood out for me, though. It was the one from Samara South (@samilexi on Twitter) who said "that would have to start at the high schools when they choose subjects", which is quite true. It stood out because that was the same thing my father, an educator at the tertiary level himself, has been saying for as long as I can remember.

Some people will then naturally ask who determines which subjects are important to "national development" and the answer is simple: the citizens. Politicians present their long-term vision for the country, and the party that wins gets to implement their vision. If it is working, they get voted back in. This is short-term in nature and that is why the Vision 2030 Jamaica National Development Plan was created with support from many sources, including both political parties (read it at http://bit.ly/vision2030jamaica). The Planning Institute of Jamaica also released the Medium Term Socio-Economic Policy Framework 2009-2012 that also provides great information on where Jamaica is attempting to go.

A country must grow its gross domestic product (GDP) if it is to be able to provide improved services and a better quality of life for its citizens. Under the "Priority National Outcome -- World Class Education and Training", the Medium Term Socio-Economic Policy Framework 2009-2012 notes that "countries that invest heavily in education and training as drivers for their long-term development have correspondingly high levels of productivity".

This is only partially true, because even modest investment in education can lead to increased productivity and more importantly, how investments are made makes a difference. Throwing money at a problem has never solved it unless the money was put in the right places.

According to the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ), between 2000 and 2007, adult literacy improved from 79.9 per cent to 86 per cent and the average annual unemployment rate decreased from 15.5 per cent to 9.9 per cent. These numbers were welcome because they were going in the right direction, but the effect on GDP during that same period was non-existent. Real GDP growth in 2000 was 0.9 per cent and in 2007 was 0.7 per cent.

Education makes up a sizeable part of the national budget when debt payments are removed, yet productivity did not improve.

The framework says that we must "create mechanisms for increasing the responsiveness of training institutions to the shifting demands of industry", but the only strategy listed for years 1-3 to accomplish this is "facilitate collaboration between HRD in firms and training institutions". There is no mention of aligning education policy with long-term development plans and then providing targeted subsidies for the subject areas that will be required to accomplish those goals.

The same publication lists energy security and efficiency as a priority, identifying the implementation of renewable energy projects such as hydropower, wind, solar, biomass and waste-to-energy as important paths. However, it pointed out that there is no plan connecting this policy to education. Workers are going to be needed to build, install and maintain this infrastructure; companies will spring up that provide weatherisation of homes and offices to improve efficiency, to conduct energy audits, and there is even the potential for manufacturing and assembly due to the labour availability and the location of Jamaica. Our education plans, however, are not taking this into consideration.

Agriculture is one of the most important contributors to our GDP, but overall output has been declining steadily. Dennis Chung's Charting Jamaica's Economic And Social Development points out that "Sugar and Banana actually showed a decrease in both volume and value" between 1999 and 2006, yet "the great majority of the country's agricultural resources (land and labour) have been absorbed in the unproductive areas of sugarcane and bananas, while the non-traditional crops, where growth has been greatest, are allocated the least amount of resources".

Two of the issues and challenges identified by Vision 2030 are "aging work force" and "environmental issues, including soil erosion from over-cultivation and inadequate soil conservation techniques", both of which can be addressed by involving the Ministry of Education.

Vision 2030 does call for strengthening of "existing educational institutions for agricultural training" and encouraging the participation of youth in agriculture, but the focus cannot only be on institutions that already provide agricultural training and that is certainly not the way to encourage youth participation.

Targeted subsidies at the secondary school level for subjects that will be applied to the agriculture industry would increase the number of potential farmers, thus combating the aging population, and farmers with improved understanding of best practices would reduce the prevalence of poor farming practices.

At Denbigh this year, I was shocked to see photos of the difference between citrus tress, melons and tomatoes grown in Jamaica and California. I was informed that our farming practices are to blame and the biggest culprit was how we treated the soil.

It makes sense to "grow what we eat and eat what we grow", but Jamaica needs more individuals with backgrounds in agricultural sciences who can help our agricultural sector become more competitive and efficient.

ICT is no different. The National Outcome #11 in Vision 2030 is "a technology-enabled society", but where are the examples of the education system steering more students towards ICT subjects? One of my best friends attended a high school outside of Kingston in the early 1990s and recently told me that only the students placing in the top five in each class back then were allowed to do computer science. This was during a period when countries like India were investing heavily in ICT because their leaders had recognised the impact that technology, and especially computers, was going to have globally.

How much has changed in our education system since then? Have we learnt anything from that obvious mistake?

The current education policy does not seek to align funding for subject areas based on long-term national policy even though the framework for the long-term direction of the country exists and is supported by both major political parties.

Mr Chung was spot on in a recent blog post when he wrote: "There must be a link between how we finance education and the national development plan. In other words, the person who wants to study the DNA of a raindrop should not be given the same level of subsidy as one who wants to become an accountant or doctor." Samara South suggested via Twitter again that guidance counsellors should be better equipped with knowledge of which subjects are important to the national policy and that career days should pull presenters from more fields than the current standard ones.

In one recent meeting with Prime Minister Golding he explained to me that his administration had legislation that it wanted to pass, but due to the lack of legal draughtsmen there was a bottleneck at the drafting stage. He also made the same point about the lack of enough land surveyors to get the land titling programme to move faster.

Had someone in the past identified these as important to national development, then the education policy would have helped to produce an adequate supply of graduates with the requisite skills. Instead, a country with a broken justice system and overburdened courts has to deal with bottlenecks in drafting laws.

If Jamaica is really going to be "the place of choice to live, work, raise families, and do business", then we clearly need to have better synchronisation between education policy and national development.

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