Have these major investments and outputs in human capital generated or improved the prospects for incremental production, increased employment or increased productivity? The answer is "no" as substantiated by the following trends over the past five years:

It has declined by 30 per cent from US$575 million in 1996 to US$403 million in 2000 with most of the current investments being associated with purchasing highly discounted assets.

In cases where it is to create new jobs, each dollar of foreign investment, primarily in the infomatics industry, comes only after Government invests equal or greater amounts to encourage foreigners to respond. They are not creating jobs for the highly trained. They are merely creating low skill, and low value added jobs which pay close to the poverty line and are likely to suffer the same fate as the 807 garment industry which boomed in the 1980s to early 1990s.

The foregoing therefore substantiates that the massive investment in human capital fails to create jobs, increase output, or attract foreign investment. Education is therefore not a sound investment for Jamaicans wishing to live and work in Jamaica. The massive public investment in it is also yielding negative economic returns.

Within the next five years, there will be more negotiations and lobbying for free movement of the factors of production, including: skilled persons, intellectual capital, and finance, more than for commodities. In fact, Jamaica's commodity export to North America and Europe will rapidly contract because the marginal propensities in these markets to consume the basic goods Jamaica exports is decreasing while their propensities to import high value goods and services will increase for a long time.

The present demand for Jamaican nurses, teachers and other professionals gives Jamaica an excellent opportunity for positioning itself for the future trend in North America and Europe. It is therefore not tactical at this time to criticise or take any action to restrain the export of our nurses, teachers and other skills. More of this should be promoted and facilitated. The economic returns will be great. The data in the table indicate that inflows from Jamaicans abroad is larger than inflows from foreign investors and it is growing faster too. In 2000 it was 16 per cent higher than what it was in 1996 while in the same period foreign investment inflows declined by 30 per cent.

The demand for Jamaican professionals create a new opportunity for education and training to become an export industry. For teachers, it becomes a great opportunity for Government to rationalise its mix of teaching resources and make major breakthroughs in the global quality of education.

By any standard, the quality, especially at the primary and secondary levels, is suspect as it took 20 years (1981 2000) to increase the literacy rate from 73.5 per cent to 79.7 per cent which means it will take in excess of 40 years to get to the Barbadian or Trinidadian levels of 99 per cent. At the secondary level, the success rate based on CXC results is less than 50 per cent.

Jamaica's education and training must be global and workforce oriented. It should therefore be strong on strategic languages, (English, Oriental and Spanish) computing, technology, numeracy and global culture. This orientation will set the stage for a workforce that is competitive for: tourism, foreign investment and employment throughout the world.

The vacant positions arising from the emigration of Jamaican teachers create the opportunity for the Ministry of Education to rationalise its staffing mix to prepare students for global and work-oriented environment.

Government should rationalise and fill the vacancies in teaching as follows:

Teaching in high schools doesn't always have to be a full-time post. This makes Government's fixed costs too high. Besides, such an approach sets the stage for having a high percentage of redundant teaching skills overtime while an approach to having a high percentage of part time teachers for specialised programmes gives students and government access to resource teachers with the latest "know how".

The final set of recommendations I would like to make are for those institutions supplying the education product.

There has to be global branding through international certification that is recognised in the global labour market. Because Jamaica has a highly migratory population, it makes economic sense to take courses that award certificates that are readily recognised in the new countries that its citizens will be adopting.

The Institute of Management Sciences for example is doing an excellent job of global branding of its education products. Consequently, demand for its programmes has been exceeding its supply capacity while UWI, Mona, on the other hand, which has a first-class product, has concentrated on localising and regionalising its brand. Consequently it is, and will continue to experience decreasing demand from students who intend to leave Jamaica after they graduate.