Technological education should be introduced at an earlier stage in Trinidad and Tobago.
This recommendation was recently put forward by Minister of Tertiary Education and Skills Training, Professor Prakash Persad, who shared that he made the suggestion during discussions with an international financial agency.
“The children need to grow up being exposed to technology from a very young age, and then they can make a mas of it very, very quickly. So this is something, so this is the idea of this proposal to the IADB, which they loved. Now, to make it abundantly clear, I am not in charge of Primary or Secondary schools or ECCE Centres but what I said, if we want to do it, we have to plan. We need to train the teachers now, and that’s what tertiary education does.”
Minister Persad noted that his Ministry can put things in place to facilitate this suggestion.
“We do teacher training. So we need to plan so when it happens, it can go forward. So this is something, again, we want to put forward, we want to take Trinidad into the age of computer technology, the internet of things.”
In the area of unemployment among Trinidad and Tobago’s youth population, Minister Persad said that with this training, this issue will also be addressed.
“What we need to do is probably focus it more and look at developing jobs. Putting things in place, and this is why maybe a National Internship Programme might be a useful thing so that when people graduate from university, they get some practical training before they go on to jobs.”
The Tertiary Education Minister made his remarks at a signing ceremony for a Memorandum of Agreement between NESC Technology Institute and the National Petroleum Marketing Company Limited on Tuesday.