Ronald Thwaites | Get school funding right

Dr Adrian Stokes, chairman of the Education Transformation Oversight Committee, which is to monitor the implementation of the Education Transformation Report (conveniently referred to as the Patterson Report), offers a very conservative view of its implementation. He was speaking at a forum on the future of denominational and trust schools last week. He said if Jamaica achieves even 20 per cent compliance with the far-reaching recommendations, we will be doing much better, even if not well enough.

By contrast to this minimalist approach, Elaine Foster-Allen, educator and public servant, Donovan Mayne, an officer of the National Parent-Teachers Association, along with many other school and business leaders present, advanced the need for urgent and systemic changes to eradicate illiteracy, poor socialisation and innumeracy.

Sadly, Dr Stokes is probably more realistic than the others. While money is no means everything needed to raise education and training levels to competitive standards, it is important to note that the recurrent budget of the Ministry of Education going forward to 2025, plans a mere five per cent increase over this year’s expenditure. This is disastrously below every projection for compound inflation over the next three years.

Similarly, the capital budget for the sector is planned to move from $1.3 billion next financial year to $2 billion in 2024-2025. Unless there is a major turnaround of thinking at Cabinet level, the nation has a big problem.

Ask yourself, where is the money going to come from to pay teachers properly, to improve infrastructure, and modernise curriculum and school services?

Place in this context the policy of this Government to prohibit auxiliary fees, and to continue nurturing the illusion that the State can, and does, pay for excellent education and training for our children.

To me, this is recklessness bordering on criminality because of the obvious damage it does to our children’s future.

SPEND LESS ON EDUCATION

People of all classes spend significant portions of their resources on entertainment, recreation, liquor, gambling and frivolous consumerism (check the cars!), while proportionally less on educating their children.

The relatively better-off 20 per cent will pay up to $150,000 a term for a child at a preparatory school up to grade six, but decline to pay $50,000 per year to the high school struggling to maintain quality, having been encouraged in this irresponsibility by the Government itself. And, as if one could add to this ludicrousness, the said parent will fork out multiples of the auxiliary fee to the extra-lessons industry, made necessary because of the inadequacy of what goes on, or does not go on, in the regular classrooms.

Talk the truth. Cost-sharing and reallocation of state subsidies are absolutely necessary.

Dr Dana Morris-Dixon, a prominent member of the Patterson group, does not mince words in calling this situation a crisis. But what is the likely response? Months have passed since the publication of the report, with little or no reaction except the regular prodding by this newspaper’s leaders of the disastrous consequences of the inattention.

Actually, the official silence should not surprise anyone. Both the Government and the ruling class in education have no stomach for the far-reaching changes required.

So, the recent PEP results have put paid to any of the Finance Minister’s projections of rapid economic growth, as will the results of the diluted CXC and CAPE exams. Summer holidays are in full force for everybody, despite the failures; and every student will be promoted in September, whether or not they have mastered the content of the previous grade. We say we are ‘tired’. No doubt. But shouldn’t we be even more tired of chronic failure?

Tell me is lie me a tell!

As they have conclusively proven at the recent parliamentary hearings on the Teaching Council Bill, the teachers’ union will oppose every possibility of holding them accountable for outcomes, even as Patterson emphasises what we knew from a long time that the highly trained and motivated teacher is perhaps the most decisive agent of effective teaching and learning.

The Ministry says they will begin town hall meetings on the Patterson Report in October. Really? That’s much too late. And with what specific policy objectives will these meetings be held?

SOME SUGGESTIONS

Here are some suggestions. First, speak the truth about financing education. The Government can’t pay everything needed for quality schooling for your pickney out of the Budget. We should nonetheless insist that they must find at least another $15 billion a year just to keep pace with inflation.

Weed out the waste and inefficient spending within the Ministry. Reverse the auxiliary-fee policy before this September and rebalance the per capita grants in favour of those who genuinely cannot pay. Use the public meetings to persuade families of the priority of cost-sharing.

Introduce the programme suggested by Basil Waite for a universal savings programme for tertiary funding. Subject to regular auditing and separated accounting, leave schools alone to raise funds from community, commerce and philanthropy for value-added programmes.

Engage the UWI and their teacher-training satellites to provide resources for the Stokes-led implementation process. To be polite, it is distressing that these institutions have offered little or no response to the Patterson-reported crisis, especially as aggravated by COVID.

Faith and trust-owned schools constitute the largest non-state element in the education enterprise. They have begun to stir: to exercise united partnership, not subservience to the ministry; to recognise that the God-given responsibility of seeing His children thrive, is greater than any and all denominational and tribal differences. This is a good sign.

There is a strong tendency in an increasingly secular society, to think and behave as if the State has really bought out church and trust schools, but leaves them an ever-reducing nostalgic role because they tend to do well. Every government official wants their children to attend one, and anyway, a few prayers don’t do much harm.

There is no more important task facing the nation than the reform of education and training. Churches, trusts and private schools, if they are to maintain their identity, must constitute themselves as a pressure group to balance the state in this reform. In the arena of moral education, they offer perspective and philosophy, which government does not l

No church is true to its calling unless it is engaged with education. Every business worthy of respect and public incentives should adopt a school. Mrs Williams is right in her call for this.

Start to fix funding before September, if we are serious about Jamaica beyond 60.

Dr Stokes: Very respectfully, expand your vision and your courage, please. Twenty per cent of what Patterson recommends can never take us to ‘five in four’, less crime, and more love. Prof Patterson, you and your respective teams ought to avoid what befell the efforts of the late great Dr Rae Davis.

Don’t surround yourself with people who have a problem for every solution. You need to be representing the strong, cogent views which you are hearing to the Prime Minister (who presides over the significantly misapplied HEART Trust nuff money) and the Minister of Finance, along with Minister Williams every week, and reporting regularly to the public – not telling us why not, but how!

Next week: possibilities for early childhood improvement and school feeding.

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.