Schools compete to be JA Dominica Apprentice School 2015

Six schools from across the island are competing for the top position of the Junior Achievement (JA) Dominica Apprentice School 2015 at JA’s first ever National Career Day Symposium.

The event which is currently ongoing at the Dominica Public Service Union (DPSU) building on Valley Road forms part of the JA Economic for Success Programme.

The participating schools are St. Martin Secondary, Portsmouth Secondary, Dominica Grammar School, Goodwill Secondary, North East Comprehensive and Pierre Charles Secondary.

“Today they are there to answer questions and to display their personal development goals, and to display their personal development portfolios,” Executive Director of JA Dominica, Natasha Yeeloy- Labad, said while addressing the opening ceremony.

She explained that in the first session some time will be spend providing students with an opportunity to have an interview experience, “and the idea is that this is a simulation experience, so the students will have about an hour for the session, or over an hour.”

“There are two representatives from each school, one of these representatives will assume the lead and the lead will do two rounds of questioning,” she explained.

There are two sets of question categories, she stated which include the general questioning categories where students will dip and select a first question, followed by dipping for another question, which would be a little more challenging, and which will be asked by the judges.

“These questions focus more on behaviour,” Labad remarked.

Additionally Labad noted, “There are four areas that we are looking at and each area caries a total of 10 points, first being delivery, the relevance of information; clarity of your communication; personal development portfolio and motivation score.”

Students are asked to focus on skills, values and their interests

Judges include a representative from Court Dominica, Jolly’s Pharmacy, First Domestic Insurance, Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) and the Dominica Public Library and information Centre who also provides sponsorship for the JA Programme.

Other sponsors include;Premier Computing, CIS Enterprises, Caprice Hair Studio, Lime Dominica, 365 MMP, Caprice Hair Studio, Jays, Julien’s Jewellery among others.

The JA National Career event was launched to provide students with an opportunity to interact with corporate Dominica while developing real world life skills.