Inadequate funding to access critical resources hurting schools – Wright

WESTERN BUREAU:

High school principals believe there has been little or no improvement in human resources and financial support to effectively combat a raft of problems in schools over the years, including violence.

That’s according to Linvern Wright, president of the Jamaica Association of Principals of Secondary Schools (JAPSS), who argued during a Gleaner Editors’ Forum earlier this week that there is a need for the Government, through the Ministry of Education, to seriously invest in the lives of the country’s children in order to guarantee them a prosperous and solid future.

“We have done nothing in terms of improving funding and improving the human resources, the technological resources and improving the financial resources to ensure that we can get our social workers, the people into psychology, to support school systems to help these students,” said Wright.

In 2017, the Ministry of Education increased the amount of money allocated to public schools per child.

Some $2,500 is being provided per child attending primary school, up from $850. That amount is equivalent to $250 per month.

Schools receive $19,000 for each student at the secondary level, up from $1,100. When calculated for the 10 months of contact time each school year, the current allocation works out to $1,900 per month.

Wright believes that this sum is inadequate to tackle the range of issues schools have to deal with.

While he and the JAPSS members are supportive of the Government’s investment in other sectors, he wants a greater concentration on investing in the education of the nation’s youth.

“I am not saying we should not build roads or we should stop giving people work, but we have got to understand that if our children are our future the priority has got to be about spending something on them now in terms of our human resources, in terms of our financial resources to assist with those things,” Wright argued.

albert.ferguson@gleanerjm.com