Recently a historic agreement on education was reached between the Government and the Opposition in Parliament. Here the Prime Minister speaks about the significance of the agreement and shares some of his concerns about the state of education in Jamaica, while outlining some positive developments and committing the Government to doing more to improve the country's education system.
This is an edited version of the Prime Minister's contribution to the recent debate on education in Parliament, delivered on October 14, 2003.
"I FELT obliged to try and see if we could secure some way in which instead of having a motion put by the Opposition against which the Government votes, or a Government resolution against which the Opposition votes, we could have a resolution that reflected the unanimous will of the House of Representatives that would send a signal to the entire county that no matter on what side of the isle we sit we are totally united in recognising the primacy of education in today's world which is knowledge driven. Education ought not to be a political football. We will not get anywhere by trying to score partisan points to the detriment of the education system. One could respond to much of the debate by speaking about what happened in the 80s versus what is happening now. With great respect, that is not going to get the education system to the point and at a speed that we all require as desirable. I feel obliged to mention however, that we did make an effort when we were formulating the National Policy of Education to try and see if we could reach bipartisan consensus. I am not going to engage in the blame game but that eluded us then. I think this resolution affords us an opportunity to achieve that objective.
A LEGACY TO FUTURE GENERATIONS
"I think it should be a signal to the country and especially to those reporting on Parliament and the conduct of parliamentarians, that there are occasions like this, when we can all rise above the partisan fray and do something that is good for Jamaica and will be a legacy from this Parliament to succeeding generations.
"We all recognise that we have to spend an increasing share of our budgetary provisions on education and human resource development. But the amount that is available to any the Minister of Finance for allocation is very severely limited by the Constitution because the Constitution gives the Minister of Finance and the Parliament no option but to provide in full for the public debt and the payment of certain public officers, like members of our judiciary.
"It is necessary to point out that we were definitely moving in the right direction before the advent of the problems in the financial sector which changed very substantially the size of the public debt and what was available for the Minister of Finance to allocate in terms of the priority attached to the several ministries.
"I should point out for the records that although the Leader of the Opposition spoke about the 10 per cent allocation in this year's budget the amount is in fact more because a block of in excess of $2 billion, which is payment for teachers, would have been placed at the time in the Ministry of Finance because those negotiations had not yet been settled. This will have to be transferred to the Ministry of Education now that the negotiations have been completed. The 10 per cent also fails to take into the account what we have been providing for the University of the West Indies.
FREE SECONDARY EDUCATION
"I should also say something about implementing the full programme of free education at the secondary school level. It is a matter that we examined very carefully long before the JLP manifesto. It is something that is strongly desired and quite frankly, if we had been able to satisfy ourselves that it could be adequately financed, by the time the JLP came to present their manifesto it would have already been implemented by the Government. We however decided that we had to make sure that no child was turned away because of limited means and that is why in the PATH programme, which was coming on stream then, we built in a special feature that would remove the difficulties and the embarrassment which some parents were experiencing in the former system.
