CARIBBEAN: CTO helps Caribbean meet international standards

CTO helps Caribbean meet international standards 
 
Tuesday July 22 2003
 
 

BRIDGETOWN, BARBADOS, (CMC) - The Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) says 
it is assisting Caribbean states meet international standards in the services 
sector. 

The CTO, through the Caribbean Tourism Human Resource Council (CTHRC) is 

developing common guidelines on quality standards for use by regional 
tertiary institutions that offer tourism and hospitality programmes at the 
associate degree level. 

The "Quality Assurance System and Articulation Guidelines' are components of 
the Caribbean Tourism Learning System (CTLS) developed by CTO and CTHRC and 
the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States Education Reform Unit (OERU). 

The CTLS is financed by the Canadian International Development Agency's 
Caribbean Regional Human Resource Development programme for Economic 
Competitiveness (CPEC). 

Its key elements include a unified core curriculum for regional tertiary 
institutions; use of occupational standards linked to the core curriculum, 
movement of students across the region and systems for transfer of credits 
between institutions. 

"We see the quality assurance and articulation guidelines as tying into our 
efforts to harmonise tourism curricula and to facilitate the movement of 
credentials across the region especially at this time when the Caribbean is 
moving towards a single market and economy," Bonita Morgan, CTO's director of 
human resources, said. 

The framework will allow the region to have training programmes for 
hospitality and tourism workers that meet international standards. 

"The intent of these standards is to raise the efficiency and quality of the 
workers so that the benefits to the region from tourism can be improved," 
said Dr. Denis Paul, principal of the T.A Marryshow Community College in 
Grenada and one of two consultants developing the guidelines. 

The other consultant is Dr. Ethely London, executive director of the 
University Council of Jamaica (UCJ).

"We want to ensure that people who come to the region are treated well by 
people who are well trained in all aspects of hospitality," added Dr. Paul. 

CTHRC held a two-day consultation recently with the heads of regional 
institutions that will implement the programme, at which a draft of the 
quality assurance framework was presented. 

"We are doing this for the region but at the same time the standards we are 
trying to establish will be worldwide standards, so that when we set up the 
framework and it is implemented it will have international acceptance," added 
Dr. London. 

The CTHRC intends to pilot the quality assurance programme in September 2003 
as an integral component of the CTLS project. 

Source: Antigua Sun, July 22 2003