ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the role of Jamaica’s Human Employment and Resource Training (HEART) Programme, launched in 1982 in bringing about the convergence. It discusses the twenty-year evolution of the Jamaican (NTA) and its role in transforming and integrating the training and educational subsystems in Jamaica. The chapter argues that HEART has emerged at the centre of a transformation process, which has exposed the irrelevance of the traditional distinction between education and training, is integrating fostering a process of integration among the two, and which gives greater prominence to the technical and vocational orientation. The work of HEART/NTA is supported by a fairly elaborate administrative structure in addition to a broader framework of governance which involves the full gamut of stakeholders in the labour market as well as in the training and educational systems. Vocational training was directed by a range of governmental authorities; primarily the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of Youth and was generally categorized as non-formal education.
