Francis says TT lacking skilled people

The type of citizens which this country produces will determine whether TT progresses as a nation or “spirals into nothingness.”

That’s the view of Minister in the Ministry of Education Dr Lovell Francis who said the education ministry has to move away from the “grammar school type of education” to one which also focuses on the technical/vocational subject areas.

“Every study we have done in terms of our economy says the skills areas are areas of growth and it is the area where we have a paucity of people.

"I have been saying for the last three years, at this point in our history, this is a watershed period. We have come to the point where we don’t have that oil and gas, we don’t have that sugar, we don’t have that cocoa to lean on, to rely on to make sure that we progress as a nation."

Francis said that point in TT's history was gone.

"From this point onwards in our history, we will succeed or fail based on the kind of citizens we produce and that is the case so education become most central to our future development.

If we get this wrong, I am telling you we are going nowhere, so at this point it’s a fundamental thing we must have to get right or else if we don’t get right, TT going to spiral into nothingness.”