The National Environmental Education Action Plan for Sustainable Development seeks to make Jamaicans aware, committed and action-oriented on environmental and sustainable development issues, using the formal education system as well as a range of non-formal learning opportunities at the national and community levels.

Chapter Three set out the issues. Chapter Four details the areas in which action must be initiated in order to achieve the vision of a sustainable future.

There are five programme areas. Two of these relate specifically to the formal education sector: The professional development of Jamaica’s educators, both pre- and in-service, is a priority to ensure sustained delivery of Environmental Education for Sustainable Development within the nation’s classrooms. The integration of Environmental Education for Sustainable Development learning outcomes within national curricula is a vital complement to teacher professional development.

Outside of the classroom, the Plan focuses on achieving an informed citizenry, with enhanced ability to participate in informed debate and democratic processes. At the national level, the focus is on general awareness, with several substantial or influential groups targeted for more specific approaches. At the community level, localized audiences are targeted, with a focus on awareness, attitudes, skills and action.

For both the formal and non-formal areas, resource material is a vital underpinning. This includes documentation and publication of existing models of good practice, as a means of spurring positive effort.

The five programme areas, then, are as follows:

Teacher Professional Development;

Curriculum Development & Implementation;

National Public Awareness;

Community Learning; and

Resources & Practices.

Chapter Four presents baseline information related to the five programme areas. Issues, gaps, needs and opportunities are identified, and these findings form the basis on which subsequent programmes and actions are designed.

The formal education system is the context for two programme areas – Teacher Professional Development, and Curriculum Development & Implementation.

Formal education in Jamaica is overseen by the Ministry of Education and Culture (MOEC), which has responsibility for a multiplicity of school types at the pre-primary, primary, secondary and tertiary levels.

Some 29 pre-primary or infant schools cater to nearly 135,000 children aged 4 – 5 years. A total of 344 primary schools and the primary grades of 396 all-age schools serve a population of more than 300,000 children aged 6 – 11 years. At the secondary level, nearly 222,000 students aged 12 – 18 years attend grades 7 – 13. These students, most of whom leave school at 15 years, are spread between all-age, junior high, special, new secondary, secondary high, comprehensive high, technical high and vocational/agricultural schools – many of them overcrowded and under-financed.

In addition to the public institutions, there are 216 independent schools, 126 of them at the pre-primary and primary levels.

The MOEC is organized in seven divisions: Planning & Development, Projects & Technical Services, Human Resource Management & Administration, Financial Management, Youth Development, Culture, and Educational Services.

The Human Resource Management & Administration Division includes the Professional Development Unit which has responsibility for coordinating and/or conducting in-service training for all Ministry personnel including Education Officers, Principals and Teachers.

The Educational Services Division, headed by the Chief Technical Director, is responsible for Curriculum Development, Student Assessment, Media Services and School Supervision at all levels of the system.

School Supervision Officers monitor all aspects of school administration, facilitated by six regional centres.

Major agencies falling under the purview of the Ministry of Education include the HEART/National Training Agency, JAMAL Foundation Limited, the Institute of Jamaica, and the Jamaica Library Service.

School-based Planning: The MOEC is committed to encouraging increased school-based planning, beginning with the preparation of school mission statements. These will serve as yardsticks for identifying necessary change and assessing the effectiveness of strategies. The focus will be on student achievement.

Community Involvement: The Ministry has broadened the base of educational planning and implementation, to include input from a range of Jamaicans, through the multi-sectoral National Council on Education. Within local communities, citizens are encouraged to help and protect their schools.

Curriculum Planning: This includes input from ‘stakeholders’ who supply information and may negotiate with the Ministry on content they would like infused into curricula – a relationship which began informally in the 1970s and has since been institutionalized. Often, the process seeks to strengthen topics already in the particular curriculum. Stakeholders, including government agencies and NGOs, may also assist with instructional materials and/or teacher education.

Equity: Inequities arise because Jamaica's multiplicity of secondary institutions vary in respect of curriculum taught, per capita recurrent expenditure, teacher qualifications, physical conditions, and social currency of the final examinations given at different levels of the system. The government has stated its commitment to removing these inequities. The current Reform of Secondary Education (ROSE) programme is designing and implementing a common curriculum for all students in Grades 7-9. The challenge posed by differing levels of student performance is being addressed by variety in instructional materials and teachers' strategies.

Quality Education for Increased Productivity: The ROSE programme seeks to provide quality education, developing productive citizens ready for further education or the working world. ROSE focuses on science & technology, career development, student-centred strategies in the teaching-learning process, and restructured student assessment. The success of this thrust at the secondary level rests on the success of the primary level programme, where Grade 6 graduates must have acquired literacy, numeracy, learning and social skills. There is increasing emphasis on integrating the social skills aspects of the primary curricula, on the basis that a holistic approach is more likely to promote learning than separate disciplines.

Finance: Cost sharing, whereby parents pay annual fees to help educate their children at secondary level; and the 'adoption' of schools by business firms, are two approaches to the ever-increasing needs of the education system.

Teacher Professional Development: The MOEC Tertiary Unit is moving to require that teachers regularly upgrade their professional skills as a prerequisite for promotion in the system; that courses in adult education are offered to all persons teaching at the tertiary level; and that teacher educators are involved in curriculum change and receive training relevant to their role in the change process.

At all levels of the formal education system, there is some – however inadequate – curricular content in place, on which to base the development of environmental awareness.

The primary level curriculum, especially in social studies, seeks to lead children on a journey outward to national and global perspectives, after first establishing a relationship with home, school and community. A recurrent theme – how human beings satisfy the need for food, shelter and clothing – introduces the idea of resources, and the effect of culture and climate.

At the secondary level, environmental issues are implied or stated in a variety of disciplines which cover the physical, economic, socio-cultural and political environment of Jamaica, the region and beyond. Environmental education is not, however, a required cross-curricular focus in the current Reform of Secondary Education (ROSE) Project, which seeks to revise the lower secondary curricula and prepare teachers for handling it; although it is included in some subject areas including science and social studies.

Syllabuses of the regional Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) are the main determinant of what is taught at the upper secondary level. Several of these syllabuses emphasize environmental knowledge and concern and, in their assessment procedures, include measures which seek to tap students' concern. This push is from the top-down, but has some effect on teacher awareness, particularly given the region’s psychological orientation towards success in external examinations.

At the tertiary level, the emphasis has largely been on upgrading technical knowledge. Lecturers and tutors must be aware of environmental issues, at least as they affect their particular disciplines. However no interdisciplinary measures promote, in the tertiary community as a whole, a real sense of environmental awareness and concern. This despite the fact that some faculties, in particular the University of the West Indies (UWI) School of Education, have been active for over nearly two decades in designing and disseminating resource materials in environmental education.

At all levels, modes of instruction remain overwhelmingly teacher-centred.

Educators Marcelline Collins-Figueroa and Joyce Glasgow, in baseline research for this National Plan, write that: "Teacher-centered, didactic strategies, which are the antithesis of what is needed to promote environmental awareness in teachers themselves, as well as in their students, are still the dominant mode of instruction."

The environmental awareness of teachers and their students can also be enhanced by sources outside of the formal institutions. These sources include subject associations, learning and resource centres, non-governmental organizations which have school-oriented programmes, government agencies, the media, and national and international programmes and projects.

Professional Development is defined as an integrated set of organized and sustained measures designed to enhance the teaching profession, within a context of school policy, organization and culture. Such measures include strategies to improve teachers' theoretical competencies; their ability to apply theory to solving educational problems; their research skills/expertise as well as their classroom skills and practice.

Initial Teacher Education refers to the first-time professional development of persons, either before they enter the teaching profession (pre-service), or while they may be teaching as untrained teachers (in-service). Continuing teacher education refers to the further education of trained teachers.

Teachers, principals, supervisors, senior personnel and other educators in the arts and humanities as well as the natural and social sciences, must be equipped with knowledge, skills, values, and teaching strategies, which will enable them to implement Environmental Education for Sustainable Development in their professional settings.

These learning outcomes for educators include the following:

Just as the levels and conditions of Jamaica's schools vary considerably, so do the qualifications of the teachers in the system.

Of the 9,265 primary level teachers in the 1996/97 school year, 6,666 were trained college graduates. Just under 2,000 were untrained secondary school graduates, and just over 400 were trained university graduates. In the secondary system, which had 11,125 teachers during the 1996/97 school year, 7,088 teachers were trained college graduates while 1,465 were trained university graduates. There were 650 full time lecturers at the tertiary level in 1996/97.