VICE-MINISTER of Bilateral Foreign Policy in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Dominican Republic (DR) José Julio Gómez says education is an area in which Jamaica could benefit from increased cooperation with his country.

Addressing the Jamaica Observer Press Club at the newspaper’s head office on Beechwood Avenue, Kingston 5 last Friday, Gómez pointed to the possibility of a student exchange programme with Jamaica which would be beneficial to both countries.

Gómez suggested that the Dominican Republic could also facilitate Jamaicans learning Spanish as a second language.

“After English, Spanish is the most used language around the world, not because we have more people but because…you can use Spanish in Latin America… Europe, Asia Pacific, and also in Africa,” added Gómez.

He told Observer editors and reporters that the DR has seen significant improvements in its education output in the past 20 years through a number of initiatives.

These included an agreement with Tokyo University of Science in Japan to help to grow mathematics education in the country.

“[By] using mathematics strategy, increasing the level of our teachers of course [and] using different countries around the world who have been adding value to this sector like Japan which always allowed us to participate in these kinds of programmes,” said Gómez.

He added that another issue which was affecting the education outcome in the DR was the limited number of schools.

“We didn’t have enough schools around the Dominican Republic to facilitate the people living, for example, in the north reaching the border,” said Gómez who pointed out that by building more schools they were able to fix this issue.

According to Gómez, in a drive to grow the education sector, the DR’s major political parties signed an agreement to allocate four per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP) to education, ensuring that significant investment was placed in this area.

He said developing the education sector also came from a 20-year initiative which started in 2004.

This initiative, similar to the student exchange proposed by Gómez, was executed with the help of Angie Martínez, who is now the Dominican Republic’s ambassador to Jamaica.

She told the Observer Press Club that the DR sent more than one thousand students to Spain every year to pursue their master’s and doctoral degrees in fields that the country needed workers for.

This initiative was then extended to other countries such as France, Italy, and eventually the United States of America.

Although successful, the initiative was faced with a challenge of getting students to return to the DR after completing their courses of study particularly because the culture of the two Spanish-speaking countries is so similar.

“At the beginning it was difficult; 30 per cent [of students] stayed in Spain,” said Martinez.

To address this issue students sent to Spain were made to sign an agreement to bond them to the Ministry of Higher Education for a period after completing their courses.

“You have to come back to the Dominican Republic and you have to return what we spend on you and they have to return for two years,” added Martinez as she pointed out that the students had to return to help develop the country.

Gómez was in the island for the second Dominican Republic-Jamaica Business Forum held at AC Hotel Kingston

December 4, 2024 will mark 60 years of diplomatic relations between Jamaica and the Dominican Republic.