EDITORIAL - Rebalancing the education debate

Robert Fuderich, the resident representative of the United Nations Children Fund in Kingston, has made an observation that is critical to the current debate over how Jamaica allocates its education budget and what it ought to do in the future.

"A lot of education investment is happening at the tertiary level because they are the most political," he said at a forum organised by this newspaper. Mr Fuderich is right - as the numbers suggest.

For instance, in the current fiscal year, the Government will spend around $10.3 billion, or 15 per cent of its education budget on the tertiary sector.

That is half of the allocation to primary and secondary education, respectively, reflecting both the higher cost of tertiary education and the subsidies - up to 85 per cent - given to students at that level.

Deep crisis in Jamaica's education

It would be untrue to claim that Jamaica's spend at the tertiary level has not been without some returns. Indeed, a decade and a half ago, the proportion of Jamaicans with tertiary education was in the single digit. Now they are around 20 per cent. This is of importance in a competitive global world.

However, the improvement, albeit slow, at the tertiary level masks a deep crisis in Jamaica's education that, if not urgently addressed, will stymie future advances and even undermine the gains already made.

As Mr Fuderich pointed out at the forum this week, up to half of the children who enter school at the primary level are ill-prepared for learning, which is clearly apparent at grade four when just about four in 10 students do not master the requirements for literacy and numeracy.

Yet, the allocation to early-childhood education is only three per cent of the budget, which it is now widely accepted is woefully inadequate - as is the case with the spend in the primary and secondary sectors.

The problem, though, is that even in better times, which were not good, Jamaica could hardly afford to lift significantly its spending on education. And the times have got worse.

Need for rebalancing

The dilemma for politicians is how, in the midst of crisis, and with less to spend, to divvy up what is available. Discerning people, including Mr Fuderich, believe that there is need for a rebalancing in favour of the preparatory stages of education, which is also the policy direction of the Government.

The administration, however, is faced with "the most political", voting-age group at the tertiary level, who insist on maintaining all the advantages they inherited - unaffordable though they may be. Unfortunately, a serious dialogue has not developed on the issue, as the political Opposition prefers to be opaque so that student dissatisfaction will accrue to their electoral benefit. In that regard, tertiary students, or their leaders, play the parties against each other with their aim of maintaining, or even improving, their circumstances.

It is time to recast the dialogue and for there to be a sensible, mature, non-partisan debate about the financing of education - who pays the bill, and for what proportion of their studies tertiary students should pay.

In this regard, we would remind the Opposition that this idea of rebalancing was initially placed on the table by the shadow finance minister, Dr Omar Davies, when he was in government. He made sense then.

The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner. To respond to a Gleaner editorial, email us: editor@gleanerjm.com or fax: 922-6223. Responses should be no longer than 400 words. Not all responses will be published.