JAMAICA will share its plans to meet adult learning targets and curb illiteracy, now running at 21 per cent, at a four-day review meeting of top international officials, which began on Monday in Bangkok, Thailand.

The island’s participant in the CONFINTEA V Mid-term Review Conference, Gloria Salmon, the just retired executive director of the Jamaica Library Service and current chairman of the Jamaican Council for Adult Education Adult Learners Week, left the island on the weekend for Bangkok.

The council advises the government on matters relating to adult education and acts as a clearing house for information on adult education, as well as a focal point for international activities impacting that area.

Salmon will share with the meeting, hosted by the UNESCO Institute of Education, Jamaica’s commitment to the drive for increased adult learning, including the planned introduction of a High School Equivalency Programme (HISEP) this year.

Salmon’s report will be one of the key documents for the international review meeting, with interest being taken in Jamaica’s “Literacy Improvement Initiative” developed to co-ordinate and link all literacy programmes in the island to one policy, through a national plan of action to improve literacy levels.

Based on plans by the education ministry, Jamaica has said it will achieve full literacy in 80 per cent of all Grade Six completers by 2003, and five years of secondary education for all students entering Grade Seven in the year 2003 and beyond.

The High School Equivalency Programme, also slated to begin this year, is aimed at creating “independent learners who will take responsibility for their continuing education during and after participation”, according to Salmon’s prepared text for the conference.

“Its specific objectives are to:

* fill the learning gaps for learners enrolling at varying stages of educational attainment;

* enable independent adult learners to obtain high school certification; and

* enable those who achieve the HISEP qualification to continue their education through the tertiary level of the Jamaican education system or in any other manner they desire,” the text said.

Salmon who has spent a lifetime in the adult literacy movement, is being sponsored by the UNESCO Institute of Education in Hamburg, Germany.

The conference will take stock of recent developments in adult learning and will recommend measures on a future course for adult education. It will also review previous commitments made at the Fifth International Conference on Adult Education (CONFINTEA V).