JAMAICA | Revolutionizing Education: A National Call for STEM Schools and Technological Transformation

MONTEGO BAY, Jamaica, May 14, 2025 -  By O. Dave Allen -  Over the years, Jamaica’s youth have demonstrated extraordinary talent in robotics, engineering, and digital innovation.

In international competitions and local showcases, we have seen flashes of brilliance—evidence that our students can rival the world’s best when given the right tools and training.

Yet, as a nation, we continue to anchor ourselves to an outdated economic model built on service, commerce, and consumption.  The urgency of now demands a pivot.

Jamaica must shift from a service-oriented economy to one driven by innovation, research, and applied technology. At the heart of this transformation lies education. The Government’s promise in 2023 to build six state-of-the-art STEM high schools was not just timely—it was visionary.

But vision delayed are opportunities lost. I now call upon Prime Minister the Most Hon. Andrew Holness to make good on that promise. The time for action is now.   We cannot afford to wait.

Our young minds, already experimenting with robotics and artificial intelligence, deserve structured environments where science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are not just taught—but lived.

The HEART/NSTA Trust, through decades of technical training, has laid a solid foundation. Institutions like the University of Technology (UTech) have contributed to the building of a skilled, problem-solving workforce. But we must scale up. We must embed innovation at every level of our education system.

This means coding must become a core part of the curriculum from as early as third form. Programming is the new literacy of the 21st century, and our students must be equipped to not just use technology—but to build it.

Moreover, our institutions must go beyond prototypes. Government must invest in digital tools, software, and industrial-grade hardware, enabling students to create products that are not just imaginative but commercially viable.

Imagine a Jamaica where simple prosthetics—hips, legs, arms, knee caps—are designed and manufactured locally using digital software and 3D printers. With the right raw materials and the right training, we could produce affordable medical devices right here, creating jobs, saving costs, and even exporting to other nations.

The same technology can revolutionize agriculture. With targeted training, each STEM high school could specialize in a productive area—from agricultural technology to renewable energy, to biotech—creating self-sustaining schools that generate solutions and value. But these schools need a kick-start: printers, software, hardware, and raw material supplies. The investment is modest, but the returns would be transformative.

We cannot continue to be mere consumers of metropolitan inventions. For far too long, we have imported the technologies and systems of others while under-investing in our own capacity to create, innovate, and lead. Why should we continue to buy their robotics when we can build our own? Why settle for dependency when we have the genius among us?

Let us remember the work of Dr. Thomas Lecky, whose groundbreaking research led to the creation of the Jamaica Hope breed of cattle—designed for tropical conditions and tailored to the Jamaican context. This is applied science in action. This is the model we must replicate across sectors.

Our economy cannot compete on scale. But we can compete on talent. To do this, we must invest in our human capital. The energy and discipline we pour into sports and music must now be directed toward science and technology. We must build an economy powered not just by labour, but by ideas.

We are at a crossroads.

If we are serious about building a resilient, competitive, and just society, then we must build the STEM schools, strengthen HEART/NSTA, empower UTech, and incentivize research and development across all sectors. These institutions are the scaffolding of the future.

Let us abandon the backwardness of an economic model that clings to commercial exchange and low-wage labour. Let us, instead, build a Jamaica where the economy is shaped by innovation, elevated by research, and powered by the brilliance of its people.

Prime Minister, the nation is watching. The future is waiting. Let us rise to meet it.

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