IT crucial to boosting productivity — Shaw

MANDEVILLE, Manchester -- Minister of Finance and the Public Service Audley Shaw has described the use of information technology in schools as essential to improving Jamaica's current productivity-per-person rate which he says is declining every year.

"One of the problems we are having here in Jamaica today is low productivity. Collectively, when you measure our productivity-per-capita, our productivity levels for the last 15 years have been declining every year," Shaw said at a graduation exercise in Mandeville last Friday.

"Information technology can become an important tool in the process of enhancing reading and comprehension and these are fundamental building blocks to a literary and productive society," he added.

According to Minister Shaw, Jamaica's productivity-per-person should be on par with "our sister nations" Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados which have seen "significant increases in productivity-per-person over the past 15 years".

Increased earnings have matched productivity for Jamaica's Caribbean neighbours, Shaw said.

"In that same period (last 15 years), our per capita income has moved from $US2,500 to under $US4,000 per person for every Jamaican. In that same period, Barbados and Trinidad have seen their per capita income move from the $US3,000-$US4,000 range to as high as $US15,000 per person," Shaw explained.

The finance minister's comments came during his address at the 11th graduation ceremony for teachers who participated in an e-Learning Jamaica Project at Manchester High School.

Six hundred and twenty-three teachers from 12 schools in Manchester and one in Trelawny were certified in the area of basic information and communication technology skills.

According to Avril Crawford - CEO and project manager, e-Learning Jamaica Company Ltd -- the e-Learning programme is geared towards training teachers to utilise information technology-based communication tools in the classroom "to deliver a more exciting and interactive approach to learning".

Shaw noted that the e-learning programme is financed in part by the Universal Access Fund (UAF). Shaw explained that part of the money spent for "every incoming (telephone) call... there's a fund that is collected and placed into the UAF".

"We have collected in the region of $7 billion through the Universal Access Fund already," he told the audience.

Below are the participating schools -- some of which operate double shifts -- and number of graduates:

Bellefield High School

-- 62 graduates

Bishop Gibson High School

-- 20 graduates

Christiana High School

-- 103 graduates

Cross Keys High School

-- 50 graduates

deCarteret College

-- 63 graduates

Holmwood Technical High School

-- 32 graduates

Manchester High School

-- 53 graduates

May Day High School

-- 51 graduates

Mile Gully High School

-- 53 graduates

Porus High School

-- 54 graduates

The Woodlawn School of

Special Education -- 16 graduates

Troy High School (Trelawny)

-- 33 graduates

Winston Jones High School

-- 33 graduates

-- Elliot Blake

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