THE United States is providing US$20 million to launch the Caribbean Centre of Excellence for Teacher Training (CETT), which seeks to improve the ability of teachers in grades one to three to teach reading. The goal is to improve literacy rates and reading skills in poor areas.

President Bush announced the initiative at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec in April, 2001, and he followed through on that pledge.

“Education is acknowledged worldwide as the most decisive factor for national progress, said Ambassador Sue Cobb, during a ceremony at the University of the West Indies, Mona campus, on Wednesday evening

“Deficiencies in educational systems strike hardest at the poor,” said the US ambassador.

She said CETT facilities will initially target primary school teachers in disadvantaged communities and populations in both urban and rural areas.

The programme, she said, “is building on the solid base you already have”.

In the Commonwealth Caribbean, 20 to 30 per cent of students are not functionally literate by the end of the sixth grade, and less than half are reading at their grade level.

The programme initially aims to establish teacher training centres in the Caribbean, Central America, and the Andes.

In the Caribbean, training centres will be established over the next year in Jamaica, St Lucia, St Vincent, and the Grenadines.

And by July in Jamaica, “we will be working with all six colleges that train primary teachers”, said Erroll Miller, the Caribbean CETT’s project director.

The education ministries in the Caribbean nations where CETT facilities are established will help guide the creation of educational materials.

They will be working with a number of international agencies, including the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Canadian International Development Agency, the British Department for International Development, Inter-American Development Bank, and the World Bank.

“Education is the fundamental building block of any society,” said USAID assistant administrator for Latin America and the Caribbean, Adolfo Franco.

Air Jamaica and Illuminat, a Barbados company, are among the first companies that have pledged to commit some of their resources to help the initiative which, during the next five years in the Caribbean, seeks to train 5,000 teachers, upgrade instruction in 500 primary schools, and improve the instruction of 150,000 students.

Cobb said the programme will be seeking ongoing support from the business community, which stands to benefit from the initiative.

“We have heard business leaders complain that new graduates are not ready for the workplace; that new hires do not have the literacy or skills to be competitive in the global market,” she said.

Prime Minister P J Patterson characterised the new launch as “a new era in regional and hemispheric relations”.

He spent most of his time, however, criticising proposals before the World Trade Organization that he said would remove legal and political barriers prohibiting providers of tertiary education into the markets of developing countries.

“We cannot, in the name of liberalisation, allow tertiary education to place emphasis on the profit at the expense of social, cultural and scientific development,” said Patterson, to applause.

Air Jamaica will help with the initial phase of the programme by providing free air travel to participants.