Editorial | A carve-out for education

Jamaica plans its recovery from the devastation caused by Hurricane Melissa, education demands a deliberate, urgent and specific carve-out.

In other words, the education is so vital the country’s long-term growth, resilience and social equity that the sector can’t be allowed to lag further behind because of damage to, or destruction of, its infrastructure, its delivery systems, or the inability of students, because of the post-hurricane circumstances, to access education.

This project must also include a re-thinking, or broadening, of traditional ideas of education – what children are taught – the a strengthening of the capacity to teachers to deliver the enhanced curriculum,

Some preliminary estimates put the direct and indirect loss from the hurricane to Jamaica’s economy in the order of US$14 billion, or roughly 75 per cent of GDP. To put that into context, the cost of the Finsac intervention to rescue the 1990s collapse of the financial sector was approximately 36 per cent of GDP.

Jamaica has taken a catastrophic blow. Especially the hardest-hit western parishes, and other poor communities where schools, roads and utilities were already fragile, poverty and inequality are at risk of worsening.

Given the broad range of the destruction, there the understandable inclination may be to focus on shoring-up the major macroeconomic indicators and urgent service delivery on the assumption that human capital investments (education and training) can be deferred. That would be a grave error.

Indeed, in the overarching recovery mission, education must be elevated from an adjunction line item to a central pillar of the national strategy.

MULTIPLE SHOCKS

There is an important context to this beyond the sector’s historically inadequate and uneven performance. The sector has suffered multiple shocks and was already weakened by the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic with lost instructional time, remote-learning inequities. Now, the physical infrastructure of schooling – classrooms, labs, libraries, utilities – has been battered by the hurricane. In one case in western Jamaica the roof of a secondary school was entirely blown off while it was serving as an emergency shelter – a clear sign that even dual-purpose facilities were not storm-resilient.

If schools cannot reopen, learning loss deepens, dropout risk rises, and the “lost generation” scenario will loom even larger. Equity demands that special attention for the most marginalised children.

In short: the national infrastructure rehabilitation programme – encompassing transport, health, water and energy, must include schools and education. However, the education component must be explicitly resourced, governed and operationalised and given distinct priority.

Funding will be a major issue for this operation. In this regard, The Gleaner proposes the creation of a School Education Recovery & Resilience Fund (SERRF) as a ring-fenced subset of the broader National Reconstruction funding. SERRF would focus exclusively on education in the disaster hit areas.

The government would ensure that it channels a fixed percentage of catastrophe-bond payouts, climate resilience funds and donor contributions directly into SERRF. For example, the parametric payout mechanisms triggered by the hurricane should allocate a portion, say 30 per cent schooling and education infrastructure. If the governance framework for the funds is sufficiently transparent and inclusive, many in the diaspora – many very dedicated to their schools – would likely contribute directly.

FAST-TRACK GRANT WINDOW

The SERRF could be used to provide a fast-track grant window for emergency school repairs (temporary classrooms, roofing, sanitation, power), enabling reopening within weeks rather than months. The Fund could also be used to mobilise public-private partnerships for the sector. The funding-raising and implementation capacity already embedded in the National Education Trust and the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF) should not be ignored in advancing SERRF programme.

Governance arrangements for the SERRF will be key to the success of any effort to carve out a special place for education. The Gleaner therefore also proposes the establishment, as a matter of urgency, of a National Education Recovery Board (NERB) under the umbrella of the education ministry, but reporting to the broader reconstruction secretariat of the larger national body. Membership should include senior ministry officials, school board representatives particularly from the affected parishes, teacher-union delegates, private-sector and civil-society stakeholders.

Operations must be built around urgency and outcomes.

The immediate phase, up to three months, should concentrate on emergency repairs – roofs, sanitation, water, electricity, temporary classrooms – and the launch catch-up programmes for displaced students, especially those who missed schooling during COVID, and are now potentially displaced by Melissa.

In phase two (three to 18 months), the focus would be on the reconstruction of school infrastructure, including that building of resilient schools: reinforced roofing, elevated floors in flood zones, on-site water storage, reliable power/back-up systems, ICT labs, community learning hubs. This would also involve the expansion of mobile-learning units to remote areas.

The third element (18–60 months) would encompass institutional strengthening. The major focus here would be on teacher professional development on trauma-informed pedagogy and blended learning; digital learning platforms; community-school engagement; disaster preparedness embedded in school culture; curriculum revision to incorporate climate-change resilience; local industrial linkage; and entrepreneurship for youth.

Infrastructure is important, health is vital, but education and training is the long-run investment without which the recovery will be fragile and the growth potential constrained.