DUNDEE, Westmoreland – Prime Minister P J Patterson, who is expected to demit office next month, has promised that more financial resources will be injected in the island’s education sector during the next financial year.,/B>

“My commitment to the transformation of our education is unequivocal and irreversible,” Patterson said on Wednesday, during the contract signing for the $33.5-million expansion of the Dundee All-Age School in his Eastern Westmoreland constituency.

“Even as I prepare to depart the political stage I am satisfied that we have devised a policy which is the subject of national consensus,” Patterson added.

Last year the government transferred $5 billion from the coffers of the National Housing Trust (NHT) to the Ministry of Education to support educational development in the 2005/2006 budget.

But the prime minister said Wednesday that more financial support would be needed over the next five years to equip the society with the knowledge and training required to make it the best trained in the Western Hemisphere.

He said that as the government moved to put the financing for the sector on a more secure financial footing, a committee chaired by economist Huntley Manhertz was established to examine ways on how to deal with a wide range of “social taxes” and contributions. The social taxes and contributions, he said, include the education tax, the National Insurance Scheme, the National Health Fund and the National Housing Trust.

The prime minister added that the report had been submitted to him and finance minister Dr Omar Davies on the source of financing for the proposed education revolution, but a decision had not yet been taken.

“Before I go, we’ll be considering that report, we’ll be taking a decision on that report which will enable the preparation of the budget for 2006/2007,” Patterson said.”

“This will put the funding of education on a secure and sustainable basis, to undertake the massive programme which will be required from 2006 into the next five years, and thereafter,” said the prime minister.

Meanwhile, Patterson said at the contract signing ceremony that the expansion of the Dundee All-Age School would see the construction of five additional classrooms, administration space for principal and staff, as well as computer room and library.

Work on the school, constructed many years ago to accommodate 150 students, will begin next month and should be completed by year-end.

The school presently has a population of 330 and operates on a shift system.

Stressing the need for the expansion of the facility, Patterson told the signing ceremony that he would not have felt contented if he had retired from politics without paving the way for the expansion of the school.

The member of parliament also used the opportunity to announce that the Maud McLeod Comprehensive High in his constituency would be expanded shortly, at a cost of $10 million.

The expansion will involve:

. construction of two blocks to accommodate five classrooms;

. expansion of an existing classroom block;

. construction of a new library block equipped with an audio-visual room, reading room and a multi-purpose area.

The Bluefields All-Age School in the constituency, Patterson added, would also be upgraded to accommodate 1,350 students.

“The consultants have been engaged, the land is being acquired from the UDC (Urban Development Corporation) and the work on that will commence in August 2006, and that project will cost us $150 million,” said Patterson.

The school, he added, would be named in honour of the first political representative for the constituency, the late Fred Barker Evans, who was popularly known as “Slave Boy”.

– cummingsm@jamaicaobserver.com