Editorial | Beyond school budgets

Leighton Johnson’s call for a review of how Jamaica finance its education infrastructure is of merit.

Such an assessment, however, shouldn’t be a stand-alone inquiry, but part of a deeper analysis of the state of education in Jamaica, using as the starting platform the two-year-old Patterson Commission report on the transformation of education in the island. Indeed, Mr Johnson could also parley this discussion into a catalyst for revitalising the teaching profession into one in which the island’s best and brightest want to be members, which, apparently, is his aspiration for his presidency of the Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA).

But this big issue raised by Mr Johnson, and others contained in the Patterson Commission’s report, aren’t the kind into which the JTA has immersed itself in recent decades, evidenced by the small-bore approach that Mr Johnson took to the infrastructure issue.

Fortuitously, Mr Johnson’s concerns over how finance for schools’ infrastructure projects is allocated and spent, and his ambitions for his presidency of the JTA, coincide with the Government’s failure, so far, to lead a substantial debate on the Patterson Report. It is an opportunity, therefore, for Mr Johnson, and, by extension, the JTA, to grasp, and own that agenda.

The JTA is a professional organisation for teachers, which is more animated than in its role as a trade union and social welfare institution. Mr Johnson was installed as its president last month.

INFRASTRUCTURE SPENDING

He addressed the question of infrastructure spending in the context of rising global temperatures, recent recurring heatwaves in Jamaica and the likely stress these will place on students and teachers who have to function in classrooms that were designed before global warming and climate change were deep in people’s consciousness.

The education ministry has said that it is piloting a project to air-condition 30 schools – out of more than 700 in Jamaica. But according to Mr Johnson, teachers often use their own money to buy fans and other equipment for classrooms. He wants greater flexibility for school administrators to spend on retrofitting their institutions, including installing air conditioners and fans.

“It goes back to how education is funded,” Mr Johnson said. “If our schools are properly funded to address the needs within the context (of the needs of each institution), then I am certain administrators who have been entrusted with a duty of care … and who have been entrusted with responsibilities over how the monies are expended will exercise responsibility … .”

There can be no argument against administrators being allocated budgets and held accountable for how they spend taxpayers’ money. But the Patterson Commission raised other fundamental issues around the financing of education, into which the JTA should delve. Not least of these is the efficiency with which Jamaica allocates and spends its limited education resources.

For instance, an analysis by the World Bank and UNICEF, using 2019 figures, showed that at 5.2 per cent of GDP, Jamaica spends more of its national income than the average for its Caribbean comparators (4.9 per cent), and just shy of the 5.4 per cent average for Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. Yet only two per cent of the Government’s annual budget for education is earmarked for capital/infrastructure projects. This compares with an average seven per cent for Caribbean states, which is equivalent to the OECD’s allocation. Half of Jamaica’s capital allocation is for maintenance.

ENHANCED EFFICIENCY

The Patterson Commission appreciated the need for spending more on schools’ infrastructure. It, however, made clear that given Jamaica’s economic circumstances, the first objective must be enhanced efficiency, including spending what is allocated before topping up budgets.

It was not only on the hard infrastructure of schools on which the Patterson Commission focused in its review of the funding of education. The commission, for example, suggested rebalancing allocations in favour of the early childhood sector away from segments of the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET), where the absorptive capacity was perceived to be wanting. In essence, the commission believed that better results could be achieved with the same or less expenditure.

The commission also proposed the up-ending of a core policy of the Holness administration: no compulsory tuition or auxiliary fees in high schools. Patterson felt that wealthier parents should be required to pay (poor students at schools attended mostly by better-off children would be exempt from fees through a form of means testing) without money necessarily being allocated to the school at which it was paid. Which means that most of the allocation would be to poorer schools, where parents lack the wherewithal to significantly contribute to the institutions’ upkeep.

The JTA should be bringing its intellectual weight to these matters as part of what Mr Johnson said must be improved “marketing the teaching profession as an attractive and viable option to the youths of our nation”.

Of course, improving wages to help blunt competition for teachers from foreign recruiters has to be in the mix. But higher salaries isn’t the only variable in this matter, as some suggest.

People are also motivated by being part of something bigger than themselves: an opportunity to shape events. Indeed, it is that exciting sense of mission that Mr Johnson should bring to the JTA and the teaching profession – if he chooses to accept the assignment.