Montego Bay, St James – Scores of high school students from East Central St James and three teachers pursuing tertiary-level teacher training last Wednesday received scholarship cheques valued at $1 million under a $3.6 million education programme for the constituency.

Ed Bartlett, member of parliament and Opposition Spokesman on Tourism, said the programme – which provides scholarships to cover tuition and books, a nutrition programme and a work/study programme for high schoolers – caters to approximately 10, 000 students from 52 schools in the constituency from basic to high school.

“We feel committed to the process of human capital development. Each year we seem to do more,” said Bartlett Wednesday in the boardroom at Doctor’s Cave Beach.

The nutrition programme is also set to get a boost come mid-September when an application for aid to an overseas agency is expected to bring in US$1 million to the programme.

“We are focusing mainly on the kitchen supplies and the establishment of a management structure for the programme,” Bartlett said. Food supplies, he said, were provided by Food for the Poor. “If indeed it is sponsored, it will be the most comprehensive programme for schools in Jamaica,” he added.

This year the programme was expanded to include teachers at the university level, whereas previously it supported only the Montego Bay Community College and Sam Sharpe Teachers’ College. It was also expanded to accommodate the distance education programme.

Bartlett said the move to include more teachers was geared at improving early childhood education.

“I am emphatic about early childhood development,” Bartlett said. “Of the 30-odd basic schools in the constituency no more than five per cent of these teachers are teacher-trained at college or university. We have to lift that,” he said.