By Damion Mitchell, Staff ReporterTHE MINISTRY of Education has submitted to the Ministry of Finance for its approval, a $30 billion budget for the 2004/05 fiscal year, a senior official from the Education Ministry told The Gleaner.
Contacted yesterday, Senator Noel Monteith, a Minister of State for Education, confirmed this, but declined to comment further, saying that the Finance Ministry and the Cabinet were yet to sign off on the proposal.
Wentworth Gabbidon, president of the Jamaica Teachers' Association, said he was hoping that, if approved, the budget, which would be $7 billion more than the previous one, would provide for the upgrading of several primary and all-age schools.
"We would want to see them (the Ministry of Education) working towards meeting some minimum standards for operation of these institutions," he said.
The minimum standards relate to proper sanitation, improved physical conditions of schools and adequate support staff.
But Mr. Gabbidon said that given the deficit in the education budget for the last several years, "as it is right now, there is no cause for comfort."
COMPLAINTS ABOUT FURNITURE
Travert Spence, president of the Manchester Principals' Association, opted to withhold his comments on the budget until it is approved. But he said that the lack of adequate furniture was a major complaint among principals who are members of the association and this needed to be addressed.
Since the start of the fiscal year last April, there have been numerous appeals for an increase in the education budget to better deal with several of the challenges facing the sector, including illiteracy and the inadequacy of furniture and equipment.
Wesley Barrett, the recently retired chief education officer in the Ministry of Education, told The Gleaner on February 23, "My frustration is that we have never been able to get the quantum of resources to make the strategic interventions. We have to provide more capital in the system, we have to persuade that there be more resources for education."
For this fiscal year, the Education Ministry has had massive cuts in its budget for repair and maintenance at all levels of the school system, resulting in numerous projects being either delayed or discarded.
According to figures from the 2003/04 Estimates of Expenditure, the budgeted $52 million for repair and maintenance at primary schools was reduced by almost a half, while that of tertiary institutions was chopped from $5 million to $130,000.
The document indicated that the amount earmarked for repair and maintenance projects at technical high and vocational schools was slashed from $10 million to $500,000, while the $11 million for the provision of equipment and furniture budget was abandoned.
In a landmark agreement last year, the opposition Jamaica Labour Party and the Government reached an agreement that the education budget would be increased from 10 per cent of the national budget to 15 per cent over the next five years.
