THE focal point of the National Education Trust (NET) Fund, when it begins operation in the next calendar year, will be to improve and undertake infrastructure work in the education sector.

Minister of Education Andrew Holness said the NET Fund will be established as an agency that will work closely with corporate entities, both in Jamaica and the diaspora, to facilitate the long-term infrastructural development of the sector.

"I have pitched the National Education Trust Fund as an agency that will work very closely with the diaspora both in terms of the corporate entities, and individuals in the diaspora, who would want to contribute but who would not be able to manoeuvre the complex landscape in Jamaica to actually make a contribution," Holness told JIS News. "So (the NET) would be a kind of one-stop shop where you could give your resources to the trust, and then the trust would in turn, assist in the development of infrastructure." He added that it would also become a mechanism through which the government could effect its long-term infrastructure development policy on education.

The main purposes of the NET Fund will be to:

. manage a National Education Endowment Fund;

. direct and co-ordinate non-financial resources, such as voluntary human resources, donated equipment, material and technology;

. act as the agency through which the government can execute its strategic objectives in developing and maintaining the education infrastructure, without being hampered by fiscal constraints; and

. interface with local and international funding organisations on education infrastructure development projects.

The NET will also act as the focal point for interfacing with the diaspora on issues of education and national development, while providing a credible institutional framework for accountability and efficient use of donated funds. The plan is also for it to organise and execute a programme encompassing school facilities construction and maintenance.

"The trust could also be the institution that owns all the education properties which would then become an asset on its books which it could leverage. So the trust will give the government and the education system a kind of fiscal space in which it can plan its infrastructural development for education," said Holness.
Beyond that, the minister said it would form part of the transformation of education, emphasising that presently, construction and maintenance functions fall within the ministry of education.

"Under the modernised ministry, that routine function would not fit within a policy ministry and has to reside somewhere and so the function of construction, maintenance and designing school infrastructure, would then be passed on to the trust," Holness said.
He added that the concept for establishing the fund came out of the need to provide financial support outside of the budgetary allocation and its concomitant constraints, so that the sector can consistently pursue important initiatives.

The fact of the "dis-investment" in the infrastructural works of the sector, which has been unable to keep pace with the population demand, also gave rise to the conceptualisation of the trust fund, Holness said.

"We still have double usage of space in terms of the shift system and we are not replacing schools that have outlived their useful life at a fast rate, so we need to do significant work on developing education infrastructures," the minister noted.
Meanwhile, he said that the NET Fund, during its formative years, would alleviate some of the cost the government sustains, for maintenance of schools. And he said that the agency would assist in implementing the developmental goals of the ministry. These include reducing the pupil-teacher ratio and removing the shift system at all levels of the sector.

"We have set ourselves the target of removing the shift system in the secondary schools and that means we have to build 45 new schools, followed very closely by removing the primary schools off shift," Holness said, adding that 95 schools are needed to remove all schools from the shift system. This is estimated to cost over US$300 million.

"Really what we want to do is to set up an institution that could show how effective it is at building schools, which would make a case for the channelling of the education tax into the Education Trust Fund, that is the long-term objective," he said.

Holness said that discussions have been undertaken with the World Bank, regarding advice on how to establish a credible institution, which will foster growth and development. He noted that the credibility of the institution would be paramount, due to the nature of the NET Fund.

"We have asked the World Bank to advise us as to how to set up an institution like the NET Fund, because if we are going to be asking persons in the diaspora and persons locally and entities in the diaspora to contribute, then it has to be an institution of integrity, of high repute; an institution that has the highest standards of accountability and governance," he said.

The World Bank will also assist with staffing and establishing the management structure for the fund. He noted that the trust would be funded through various initiatives or avenues by establishing an endowment fund. These include: contributions from the consolidated funds; contributions from corporate entities in the diaspora; contributions from individuals in the diaspora; proceeds from casino tax; local and internationally sourced loans; grants from international partners; local and international philanthropy; and from other fund-raising type events.

"In other words, the endowment could be made up of persons or entities who would want to contribute by virtue of good-will for education," he said.

The trust, he said, will be established as a statutory body similar to the National Housing Trust (NHT). This means that "eventually, we would want to change the operating structures to make it firmly placed in the law as to what the trust can do, the obligations and the responsibilities of the directors".
- JIS

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