Parris Lyew-Ayee Jr is proper that Jamaican scientists, and the island’s Scientific Analysis Council (SRC), which he chairs, have carried out a lot good work over many a long time.
What, although, is questionable, within the absence of higher proof – though we fervently want it had been the case – is that Jamaica is on the cusp of a take-off in science and expertise. Or ‘Science 2.0’, as Dr Lyew-Ayee put it in a message on this newspaper marking November as Science and Expertise Month. “We’re constructing on the sturdy legacies of premier pioneer scientists in Jamaica’s historical past,” he mentioned.
There are, certainly, inspirational legacies of science and expertise in Jamaica. There’s the work of individuals just like the animal geneticist, Thomas P. Lecky, who bred cattle that thrive in sizzling international locations, or of Albert Lockhart and Manley West, with their pioneering efforts, almost half a century in the past, in medical marijuana. Or of the nameless researchers of the SRC, who assist to good processes that enhance individuals’s lives and produce merchandise to market.
However as vital and important as these are, Dr Lyew-Ayee will little doubt concede that Jamaica’s achievements in science and expertise are removed from enough for the island to take full benefit, as Prime Minister Andrew Holness hopes, of the rising fifth industrial revolution and be aggressive within the new international financial system.
Jamaica enjoys pockets of excellence in science and expertise. It, nevertheless, lacks the underlying infrastructure required to maintain a serious nationwide venture in analysis and improvement (R&D) or to essentially adapt, for fast financial improvement, applied sciences, resembling in synthetic intelligence, which can be quick rising on this new industrial age.
MUCH CAN BE DONE
Which isn’t to suggest that nothing could be achieved in, or salvaged from, the present circumstances. A lot could be carried out. Nonetheless, contemporaneous with a drive for R&D inside the current infrastructure, Jamaica should urgently consider growing an ecosystem for science, expertise, engineering and arithmetic (STEM) schooling.
With respect to doing extra and higher with what now exists, this newspaper believes that the College of Expertise, Jamaica (UTech), a state-owned establishment, and largely financed with taxpayers’ cash, must be mandated to return to its core (it now provides a variety of social science levels), with the goal of returning to the trail of changing into an elite polytechnic targeted on R&D and innovation.
Additional, the Authorities should think about methods, by means of discussions with the non-public sector and tertiary establishments, to incentivise R&D.
An earlier resolution to permit pension funds to speculate as much as 5 per cent of the portfolios in start-ups was constructive, however inadequate. It could be potential to plot fiscal regimes that encourage corporations, and other people with deep pockets – even when not in search of to convey particular merchandise to marketplace for their very own account – to put money into the R&D efforts of analysis establishments. Developed international locations, primarily by way of the non-public sector, spend as much as 4 per cent of their gross home product (GDP) on R&D. Latest figures for the Caribbean, together with Jamaica, usually are not out there, however some estimates recommend that the area’s expenditure on this space is half of 1 per cent of GDP.
Over the long term, Jamaica’s success in science and expertise, and finally in R&D and innovation, rests on having a cadre of individuals outfitted to function in these fields. That begins with having system of STEM schooling. Which isn’t presently the case. As an illustration, in this yr’s Caribbean Secondary Schooling Certificates examination solely 37 per cent of almost 20,000 Jamaican college students handed arithmetic, a basis topic for science and expertise. A lot of those that handed scraped by means of with the bottom grade. That is after lots of the examination’s age-eligible cohort had been excluded by their colleges from the check on the premise that they didn’t make the lower.
PROBLEM
This isn’t primarily the fault of scholars. Jamaica has lengthy had an issue with the educating of maths and science, and in retaining lecturers who’re competent at it – as was highlighted by the Orlando Patterson fee report on the transformation of Jamaica’s schooling system.
The fee famous a “important scarcity” in high quality STEM lecturers, in addition to technical and vocational topics. “The scarcity is repeatedly highlighted as an instantaneous hyperlink between the variety of high-school college students with STEM competencies in a globally aggressive workforce,” the fee mentioned.
Whereas the issue of a drift from Jamaica’s lecture rooms is common, STEM lecturers go quicker – often for better-paying jobs within the non-public sector or to show overseas. “Between the 2014 and 2015 educational years, almost 500 arithmetic and science lecturers left the general public secondary-school system,” mentioned the Patterson report, delivered 13 months in the past. “In the beginning of the pandemic, Jamaica misplaced an estimated 390 lecturers between September 2019 and January 2020.”
A authorities programme to supply scholarships in STEM topics has not labored as effectively as hoped. Recruits don’t just like the phrases of their bonds and don’t discover the pay particularly engaging. Even because it continues with this and comparable initiatives, the Authorities should radically rethink and reconfigure its strategy to STEM schooling.
As an illustration, Prime Minister Holness is dedicated to constructing six specialist STEM excessive colleges. He, as a part of a brand new strategy, ought to invite the non-public sector and different organisations and foundations to be important companions on this scheme, together with financing the development of their establishments, recruiting employees and subsidising their salaries, and being events to the general administration of the colleges. These elite establishments is not going to solely assist to form a future cohort of scientists and innovators, however can grow to be laboratories for greatest practices in STEM schooling for different colleges.
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