The Education System in Jamaica

Jamaica’s Education is mostly based on the British style. In 1980s, the educational method in the island was extremely complicated. The public school system was mainly controlled by the Ministry of Education and provincial school boards. The 4 main levels are preprimary, primary, secondary, and tertiary or higher education and divided into a number of different categories of schools.

The early childhood or preprimary level is comprehensive of Basic, Infant and nursery. The age group is mostly 2 to 5 years. In 1942, the Jamaican government starts to support the improvement of early childhood education. The primary education includes children ages from 5-12 years (grades 1 to 6). Secondary is publicly and privately owned and attended by students with age between 10 and 16 years. The high schools in the country may possibly be single-sex or co-learning institutions, and several schools pursue the usual English grammar school model exercise during the British West Indies. The tertiary includes the Vocational Training Centers, Community Colleges, Teachers’ Colleges, Colleges and Universities (Publicly and privately owned or run). The local universities are University of Technology, previously The College of Art Science and Technology (CAST); University of the West Indies (Mona Campus); the University College of The Caribbean; the Northern Caribbean University and the International University of the Caribbean.

Even though there’s no free education in the country after the primary level there are chances for those who cannot meet the expenses of further education in the vocational field via wide scholarship network from different universities and also in the course of Human Employment and Resource Training-National Training Agency (HEART Trust-NTA) program.