THE free education debate has come full circle in a quarter century.

These days it is Edward Seaga and his Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) who are making the running on the issue, promising to eliminate the 15 per cent to 20 per cent of cost of tuition Jamaican parents now pay for their children in high school.

“This is the last September you will pay school fees,” says the JLP in a policy ad, anticipating victory in the general elections to be held by year-end.

Seaga, no doubt relishing the discomfiture he is causing the ruling People’s National Party (PNP) on the issue, remembers the time, back in 1973, when he was on the receiving end of the argument.

The late Michael Manley was the charismatic leader of the PNP, the prime minister of Jamaica and at the height of his political powers.

By Seaga’s account, on May 1, in the budget debate, he made a devastating presentation on the administration which had come to office the year before. Manley was to respond the next day. It had to be a command performance.

“He went to Parliament this evening (May 2) and, in his usual inimitable style, delivered himself of a tour de force on free education and why we should have that facility for our children,” Seaga recounted at a JLP fundraiser.

“So moved was my colleague, Edwin Allen, (shadow education minister) that after the speech he crossed the floor and shook Manley’s hand,” recalled Seaga.

Manley’s tour de force, as recorded by Hansard, the official record of Parliament was the following statement: “…I am very pleased to announce that the Government of Jamaica, commencing in September of this year, is announcing a scheme for free secondary education.

“…This year September, all school fees in secondary schools in Jamaica will be abolished and supplied by the Government and next year September all other fees such as games fees and other kinds of fees will be abolished in Jamaica.”

Manley also announced free education at the tertiary level.

Hansard records that the announcement was greeted by “prolonged applause”, a standing ovation by Government members as well as “cheering and dancing” in the galleries.

According to Seaga, the euphoria over free education was short-lived. As the Government faced major economic challenges, allocation to schools did not cover expenses. The Government, he said, began to charge tuition fees disguised as fees for a variety of extra-curricular and supplemental purposes.

Whatever the reality, the Manley decision — which some claim he announced on a spur without consultation with his finance minister — led to an explosion of educational opportunities and was among the social programmes with which his democratic socialist administration is indelibly identified.

Indeed, when the PNP sought re-election in 1976, free education was one of the achievements it touted.

“…Jook dem with the free education”, taunted a party song of the period.

Which makes the JLP’s potential capture of the political ground on education all the more galling for many PNP activists and is possibly contributing to the, up to now, incoherent responses of the ruling party to the JLP promise.

“The PNP is the party of education and educational opportunities,” says an important PNP activist. “Anything else, but they can’t beat us on that issue. They cannot be allowed to beat us on that issue.”

In so far as a debate is taking place on whether the Government can fully eliminate tuition fees for secondary schools — adding to what takes place at the primary level — it has turned on affordability. And the claim that it was opposed by the JLP in the 1970s.

More serious critics of the JLP’s proposal say that it will cost over $1 billion a year, and given the country’s fiscal problems, it will demand either raising new taxes or borrowing more.

In a speech a week ago, the PNP’s campaign director, Dr Paul Robertson, noted that parents do not pay tuition fees at the primary level and that those who could not afford to pay can get a waiver for school fees at the secondary level.

“Over time, as the economy strengthens, we have no problem in ensuring that the high school is totally free as well,” Robertson said. “We have to ensure that the quality of our schools doesn’t drop.”

In the current fiscal year the Government has allocated approximately J$22 billion to education or about 10 per cent of the overall budget — the region in which it has hovered in recent years. But with debt servicing costs, which account for just over half of the Government’s expenditure, spending on education doubles to 20 per cent of what remains. Jamaica has a national debt of nearly 140 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP) and a public sector deficit of about five per cent.

It is these realities, the experts say, the JLP must face.

“Despite the political promises… this is one promise that they are going to under-deliver if they form the Government,” says human resources development consultant, Dr Henley Morgan. He doubts that the JLP will be able to raise the cash to fund its educational programmes.

Indeed, budget problems during Seaga’s 1980s administration caused the beginning of the roll-back of the free education programme. It started with the so-called “cess” that Jamaican students attending the University of the West Indies (UWI) were asked to pay.

In effect, they were being told that they would have to pay a portion of the economic cost of their education. These days it is up to 20 per cent.

When the university fee was reintroduced in the second half of the 1980s, Manley, then in Opposition, declared at a public meeting that it would be reversed when he returned to office. It didn’t happen when the PNP returned to office in 1989 — neither under Manley nor his successor and current prime minister, P J Patterson.

In fact, the administration, faced, like Seaga, with an economic crunch, extended to lower down the education ladder, the fee systems.

“We found that the subvention from Government kept static, despite the movement in costs,” explained the education minister, Burchell Whiteman, in defending the action. “Consequently, schools suffered from being under-funded.”

Whiteman, when he introduced secondary school fees in the mid-1990s, found a euphemism for it: cost-sharing.

“A new and more acceptable term was … necessary to sell to the Jamaican public,” notes Dr Alfred Sangster, former principal of the College of Arts, Science and Technology (CAST) which is now the University of Technology (UTech).

According to Sangster, school administrations welcome this “pool of alternate funds”. It allowed principals to spend in areas, such as service computers and laboratories, replenish the library and help pay operational expenses, which might have been difficult otherwise.

The JLP has not yet fully outlayed its proposals for financing education, although it has said that the free tuition component will demand neither new taxes nor substantial cutbacks. In any event, the JLP group of young professionals, G2K, has put the additional cost at no more than $650 million, rather than over $1 billion.

In the past, though, Seaga has talked about raising a $7-billion bond to spend on education, but critics point out it would mean increasing the current stock of debt.

The additional funding would allow a JLP government to pump more financing into recently upgraded high schools, which lag behind the richer traditional high schools, which have both higher budgetary allocations and, generally, parents, who can afford to contribute more to their upkeep.

“We intend to equalise the amount of funding that is provided for all schools… not by reducing what exists at those schools that get more because they have more fee paying parents,” said Seaga at last week’s fundraiser. “We intend to equalise it by bringing up those that do not have the benefit of parents who can pay fees on a regular basis.”

Whiteman views Seaga’s education bond as smoke and mirror.

The instrument, he says, is a form of taxation that everyone has to pay for at a later date. In addition, he questions the sustainability of a future JLP government assuming the full cost of free education all at once, rather than over time.

Whiteman, and the Government, have support, at least in one political quarter. Hyacinth Bennett, the president of the National Democratic Movement (NDM) which is part of an election coalition called the New Jamaica Alliance, has described the JLP’s proposal as “political sloganeering”. Someone eventually has to pay, she says.

Bennett, who runs a private school, said her party was in favour of streamlining the cost-sharing arrangements to “ensure that students from poor households have easy and trouble-free access to financial assistance” and not be exposed to humiliation.

Seaga and his party are, however, finding support for their idea in powerful and influential quarters.

Sadie Comrie, in her inaugural speech as president of the Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA) last week, said that free education would be among the issues to be pressed by her administration, on the basis of an “international campaign to put public pressure on governments to fulfil their promises to provide free, quality education all round”.

She later told the Observer: “We believe that the Government has a responsibility to provide free tuition to all students at the secondary level.

“It doesn’t matter which one of them, we will still be adamant on the situation of free education for the children of the country.”

For John Issa, the principal of the SuperClubs hotel chain, if a government really intends to make education a top priority, the affordability problem is surmountable.

“All governments have found money when they need it,” he said in a speech last Thursday.

So money was found, for instance, for Finsac, the agency that bailed out the financial sector after its mid-1990s collapse, as well as for dubious projects under the administrations of either party.

“No government has ever really been serious about investing in education,” Issa argued. “…Jamaica has never been short of money to support any project the (ruling) party wanted. If we don’t invest in education we won’t have a civilised country.”