CMI to offer postgraduate diploma to ready teachers for CAPE logistics

The Caribbean Maritime Institute (CMI) has expanded its programme offerings to include a postgraduate diploma in logistics and supply chain management. The diploma, which is slated to come on stream in June 2014, is geared towards educators, particularly those at the high-school level, to allow for them to deliver the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE) syllabus. This syllabus will be launched in 2015.

The aim of the programme is to expand the knowledge of logistics and supply chain management in the Caribbean. The CMI, in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC), has agreed to develop an advanced syllabus (CAPE) for logistics and supply chain Operations for the high schools in the Caribbean. The CMI has taken on the charge to develop this syllabus to commence delivery by September 2015 across the Caribbean.

Dr Fritz Pinnock, executive director of the CMI and head of the Logistics Task Force Sub-Committee on Education and Training; and Dr Ibrahim Ajagunna, director of the School of Academics at CMI, are the conveyors for the development of this programme. Resource personnel have been identified in Barbados, St Lucia, Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana to participate in the curriculum development.

The programme will add to the pedagogy landscape, build capacity and enhance teachers' professional profiles, and improve employability across the region.

The Government of Jamaica announced its plans to utilise logistics as its growth strategy in the last financial year. Various ministries have partnered to sensitise the country to the primary manifestation of this strategy - the creation of a logistics hub. The Ministry of Industry, Investment and Commerce and the Ministry of Education, as well as the CMI, have charged an initiative to conduct Logistics 101 training seminars across the island. To date, more than 10,000 persons have been trained in this course.

According to the CMI, equipping teachers with the required knowledge to deliver the CAPE syllabus is part of the next phase to ensure the people of Jamaica are prepared for the jobs that will be created when the logistics hub is established.

This will prepare students and faculty in teachers' colleges and community colleges across Jamaica to deliver the CAPE syllabus when it is launched in 2015. As a pilot project, the CMI will train in-service teachers at the Sam Sharpe Teachers' College over a 12-week period, commencing June 9, 2014.

The CMI believes that this is a timely development that seeks to expand the knowledge of logistics and supply chain management in the Caribbean.