Students Graduate from CAP Programme

More than 450 students graduated from the rebranded Career Advancement Programme (CAP), during a ceremony held at the Jamaica Conference Centre on December 11.

The CAP was implemented in 2010 as a second chance for students aged 16 to 18 to fulfil their career goals. Since then, the programme has been restructured to enable greater levels of efficiencies in its administration and outcomes.

In his address, Minister of Education, Hon. Rev. Ronald Thwaites, commended the students who seized the opportunity to better themselves through the CAP.

“Many of you didn’t have too strong a performance in high school. You never sat down and said, ‘nutten nah gwaan fi me’; instead you chose this programme to improve your ability to gain employment or to move on to higher education,” he said.

The Minister encouraged the graduates to build on the skills and competence they have achieved.

“It is your ticket for a better future. We congratulate each of you for completing the course and for not dropping out. Too many students in the original CAP cohort, for one reason or another, dropped out and didn’t complete. If we are going to improve or advance ourselves out of poverty, we have to persevere and stick with the programme,” the Minister emphasised.

For his part, Chairman, CAP Technical Working Committee, Dr. Cecil Cornwall, said under the revised programme, greater emphasis was placed on enhanced capacity building, intervention for teachers and coordinators, delivery training and continuous assessment using the Competency-based Education and Training methodology.

He noted that the programme offers skills in areas such as hospitality, tourism, information and communication technology (ICT), business and agriculture.

Dr. Cornwall informed that students were registered for both the National Council on Technical and Vocational Education and Training (NCTVET) and City and Guilds June 2013 examinations.

“A total of 5,604 (students) were registered for NCTVET exams, of which 35 per cent achieved certification.  City and Guilds registered 4,140 students (in the)  English for Office Skills and of that number, 45 per cent of the students were certified; 4,513 students registered for numeracy, and of that, 82 per cent achieved certification,” he said.

Dr. Cornwall noted that for academic year 2013/2014, the CAP technical working committee reviewed and revised the programme with a view to improving the desired outcomes for retention and certification.

He added since the technical working committee took office on January 14, they have improved the National Vocational Qualification of Jamaica (NVQ-J) examination results by 5 per cent for the January to May period.

“We increased the NVQ registration of students for continuous assessment from 17 per cent to over 87 per cent and is able to account for every student on the programme,” Dr. Cornwall said.

Students are also being streamed into either the technical or general programme based on their abilities.

For the current academic year the projection is for little over 6,000 students to participate in the CAP, up by 2,000 over last year. A total of $273 million will be spent on the programme.