Ronald Thwaites | Free education is a delusion

Education is never free. Nothing of value and quality is ever free. It is always a matter of who pays. Those of us who are lovers know that love is not free – it requires sacrifice and commitment. Not even salvation is free. It was paid for by the shedding of precious blood.

So when Jamaicans are told, especially from political platforms, that education is free, they get it that they have no obligation to contribute to its cost and that government will pay all that is needed. Would that it were so. Sadly, it doesn’t happen.

For while the State makes a very sizeable contribution to each citizen’s schooling, it would require double the present $120 billion budget to offer, without more, the quality of education and training to which we all aspire and which the nation drastically needs to grow beyond the mirasmic two per cent GDP annual forecast and to flourish socially.

GOING FOR BROKE?

Now it is a worthy proposition that if we really respected each other, we should mandate our government to do exactly that – go for broke in human resource uplifting. That is the discussion which should dominate church pulpits, town hall meetings and excite Parliament to awake from their comatose irrelevance and pointless divisiveness.

But until such unlikely concentration takes place, please banish the illusion that present government money can stretch to pay the full cost of quality education. Proof of this comes from the big yellow budget book which shows projections of three per cent recurrent and eight per cent capital annual increases for the Ministry of Education over the next two years. These increments don’t even keep pace with inflation.

So where is the remainder of urgently needed resources to come from? Unless and until we answer this there are only two options. We can continue as we are with marginal improvements and continued underperformance with the apartheid system further entrenched . The other likely happening is the deterioration of our school plant, teacher quality and student uptake at a rate which will make the still incalculable COVID-19 learning deficit look ‘peaw-peaw’.

COMPLACENCY WITH UNDERACHIEVEMENT

The Haitianisation of education is a distinct possibility. Vice Chancellor Beckles has warned ominously of the normalised acceptance of ourselves, despite being brimful of every talent, as a underskilled, low-wage labour force in a society doomed to chronic inequality, external domination and persistent poverty.

It was to move decisively beyond that mindset, to which we seem to be on the verge of conceding, that The University of the West Indies, in partnership with the Victoria Mutual Group, last week hosted a colloquium on the issue of sustainable financing for tertiary education. And none too soon because it is common knowledge that most if not all colleges and universities in Jamaica are so weak financially that standards will drop and the targeted tripling of enrolment become impossible.

Minister Williams did justice to her office and honour to the gathering by attending and participating through the entire proceedings. She knows that the fate of tertiary education, however resourced, both determines and depends on the quality of early childhood, primary and secondary standards. There follow some tough decisions. Government contributes about three per cent of the education budget to pre-primary education by comparison to 18 per cent for tertiary support. Clearly, that imbalance cannot continue. But redressing it will, by itself , upend the entire construct.

RESTRUCTURING

So, too, will the overdue repurposing of the massive $14 billion annual HEART/NSTA Trust income which is disproportionately used for Level One and Two certification – standards which should be a high school graduation requirement rather than a tertiary pursuit.

The vice chancellor asserts that the capital needed to provide access to tertiary education and training for all exists within the economy. He and Professor Williams, the vibrant new Mona principal, have more faith in exciting the Jamaican financial sector to partner than I do. Sir Hillary quotes his Bajan experience of being able to persuade corporations to sponsor university infrastructure. Williams posits an ingenious student loan scheme capable of attracting pension funds and making repayments contingent on the future earnings of beneficiaries. It would be good if nationalist companies like Victoria Mutual (despite its name) can help to responsibly liberate the necessary investments.

I contend that there are very significant wastages in the ministry and duplications in the tertiary sector which, if corrected, would release resources for wider and cheaper coverage. The still largely unconsidered Patterson Report confirms this position.

THE ATTITUDE DEFICIT

Sir Kenneth Hall brought a realistic angle to the discourse by identifying an “attitude deficit” towards defining and embracing responsibility for education. This is where the sense of entitlement to free education becomes most pernicious. Business and the public have yet to be confronted with the need for radical culture change to restore the priority of education.

Quality education opportunity up to and including tertiary studies must never be denied any Jamaican on the grounds of inability to pay. But that principle, still breached despite all the loose talk about free education, requires the vital and proportionate financial contribution of all who can afford this precious opportunity. Right now we have our priorities upside down. It is easier to get a loan to attend a bashment event, afford bird bush or buy an old car than it is to fund a year’s university fees.

It wasn’t always this way. In the period up to independence, the post-emancipation generations worked, saved and borrowed to afford the scarce schooling which they understood was the only legitimate means of upward mobility. Most of us worked and studied and fulfilled our bonds. Plenty would go to school and then go home to teach the lessons learnt to siblings whose tuition was unaffordable.

It is that spirit of whole-society engagement with education which must be recreated. A culture of co-payment over a long period must be seen as opportunity, not unjust obligation. I have heard that President Obama and his wife never finished paying off their student loans until he was on his way to the presidency. Public policy must stop encouraging “a freeness mentality” when its own resources are cramped.

There is no subject more crucial to the nation’s future. As things stand, assuming that government will provide quality free education in the foreseeable future is a delusion.

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. He is former member of parliament for Kingston Central and was the minister of education. He is the principal of St Michael’s College at the UWI. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.