THE OLD Elim Agricultural School in St. Elizabeth begins its new life as the Sydney Pagon Agricultural School with a grant of $2.5 million from the Jamaica Broilers Group.
The school, renamed in honour of Sydney Pagon, Member of Parliament for the area for 23 years and who was instrumental in its establishment, will receive the grant in five payments of $500,000 each year over five years.
From the start, Elim has been a specialist school for agricultural training. In its new life its focus will be on aquaculture. Jamaica Broilers, through its subsidiary, Aquaculture Jamaica Ltd, is a world-class producer, processor and exporter of tilapia, the freshwater fish. There is, therefore a bond of mutual interest between the company and the school. Robert Levy, Broilers' CEO, at the renaming ceremony led by Prime Minister Patterson on March 21, promised that in addition to the substantial grant, the company would make its expertise and facilities in aquaculture available to the school..
This is not just altruism. The company stands to benefit from the availability of more trained persons as it seeks to expand its aquaculture business further into international markets where it has already made commendable inroads. The school can use its grant to help facilitate the training of these persons valuable to an industry with good future growth prospects.
The link between Education and Industry needs to be expanded and strengthened. We hear more about the links in higher education. The universities are building endowment funds and are the recipients of scholarships and professorial chairs. Lower down the system there is some support but more usually of the one-off kind. We believe there is much room for much more targeted support to build centres of excellence in technical/professional education and to support areas of curriculum like literacy, numeracy, information technology or civic education at the primary level.
One of the negatives of the state control of Education is the view that Government will do it. But the Government can never anywhere meet all the needs of Education. The support of private enterprise, of church, of parents and of community is absolutely necessary for the system to perform well. What is needed to a larger degree is the kind of enlightened self-interest of a Jamaica Broilers.
