Paulette Dunn-Smith, executive director of HEART Trust/NTA.
The new leadership of HEART Trust/NTA, the Government's national technical training and certification agency, appears set to wean many of its 26 training centres off its budget with plans to transform them into self-financing community colleges.
Executive Director Paulette Dunn-Smith, five months into the job, says the plans are not yet off the drawing board as the agency was still "conceptualising the new framework", which is to involve the specific training programmes offered by the colleges being determined by market demand.
The apparent move to financial self-sufficiency is expected to be accompanied by a hike in tuition fees, which are now heavily subsidised and represent 1.6 per cent of its annual budget.
corporate operational plan
The agency's 2008-2009 corporate operational plan projects income from tuition fees this year to be $105 million, while the mandatory three per cent levy on businesses is expected to net $5.31 billion.
Expenditure, however, is projected at $6.5 billion.
Dunn-Smith is cagey on the details of how the transformation plan is to be funded.
"There are no definite plans, so we cannot speak to the matter of financing," she said of the prospects for self-sufficiency.
In addition to its 13 community-based training centres, HEART Trust offers its technical and vocational education and training programmes primarily through 10 academies providing
"As we look to the future, and consider the best ways to use available resources to meet the developmental needs of our country, strengthening the technical vocational education and training system is paramount," Dunn-Smith said.
"We are looking at upgrading existing vocational training centres in order to get them to the point of being able to function as independent community colleges. The oversight of these colleges would then be transferred to the University Council of Jamaica."
The changes will see HEART's level one training, now offered free and which accounts for the bulk of the agency's student population, being hived off to high schools at the sixth-form level.
The education ministry is said to be working on a programme that would make the sixth forms compulsory to facilitate mandatory technical and vocational training leading to the Level One National Vocational Qualification of Jamaica (NVQ-J) certification, which HEART would ditch.
first test
The first test of this programme will begin January 2010, with a pilot involving 2,500 students in 10 schools and covering "a wide range of skills areas," according to the ministry's director of communication, Colin Blair.
The pilot is estimated at $20 million, with funding from "HEART subventions to the MoE (Ministry of Education)," said Blair.
Full roll-out is slated for September 2010, at which point the issue of funding becomes a lot less specific, but will involve, said the MoE spokesman, "key agencies", whose resources will be "pooled and utilised for the execution of the programme".
The new community colleges will focus on offering higher-level training, leading to levels two, three, four and five NVQ-J certification.
These courses of study attract fees, which are expected to be increased under the new college structure.
"It is likely that within a new framework, the community colleges would require fees to provide training in courses of level two and above," said Dunn-Smith.
That's as far as she would go to confirm that HEART's programmes were about to become more expensive for the agency's trainees, who are often from income-challenged households.
new entry requirements
Dunn-Smith is also not saying whether new entry requirements will be attached to enrolment in the new colleges, the projected cost savings from cutting level one training and the anticipated budget for running the independent colleges.
Nor is she prepared to say whether curriculum or other changes are coming for the specialised training institutes such as that in Runaway Bay, St Ann, which exclusively provides hospitality training.
In addition to its core technical curriculum, the HEART Trust/NTA also provides services in policy analysis, planning, technical assistance, instructor training accreditation, enterprise-based training, vocational curriculum development, development of training and facilities standards, and the compilation of labour-market information.
The agency is responsible, too, for ensuring that all technical training programmes operated by other government agencies, ministries and private training institutions conform to national accreditation standards.
Its current focus is on enterprise-based training and renewable energy technology programmes.
"We gauge market needs, then mobilise and adapt our programmes to respond by producing a cadre of trained persons to meet those needs," the executive director said.
avia.collinder@gleanerjm.com