ST JAMES, Jamaica — Education Minister, Fayval Williams has reiterated the ministry’s commitment to preparing students for the world of work to include the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector through a number of programmes currently being worked on.

“Our ministry has been working on a number of programmes to better prepare students for work after they leave school. These include plans to improve their technical skills as well as their language and their broader communication skills,” stated Williams.

“Among our plans is the training of students in preparation for BPO in which BPO fundamentals for customer engagement operations is introduced in secondary schools on a phased basis,” said Williams.

The minister noted that while the Human Employment and Resource Training/National Training Agency (HEART/NSTA) Trust is the established body to conduct assessment and certification, evaluation and monitoring are to be done by the ministry’s education officers, technical development officers and BPO coordinators.

Communications skills are essential to the BPO sector and as such efforts are being made to improve students performance in the English language.

“With this in mind, we have implemented the following strategies where evaluation and monitoring are ongoing. CSEC (Caribbean Examinations Council) no has an oral component assessment via School Base Assessment (SBA). City and Guilds English has an oral component at levels one two and three. A building block approach is utilised where students are introduced and assessed at level one

“Monitoring evaluation on the necessary intervention is done to bring the students up to level three at the end of two years. This examination is approved and supported by the ministry for work and further studies. The national standards curriculum that we have here in Jamaica looks at strategic measures that are being taken to help Jamaican learners at the primary and secondary levels to become more effective users of the principles and practices of Language Arts embedded in our curriculum is communications and collaboration, critical and creative thinking. This curriculum is students centred using more active learning in an integrated approach across disciplines. So, embedded in this curriculum is the STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) approach and the integration of information technology,” argued Williams.

The minister was addressing the final day of the third staging of Outsource 2 Jamaica conference — exhibition — career summit 2021 on Saturday. The two-day conference is being held virtually from a location in Montego Bay.

Williams said the expo provides a great platform to showcase what is being done in training as well as to highlight new areas of opportunity.

Anthony Lewis