A future government formed by the opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) would abolish the local government ministry as part of a strategy to fund the elimination of tuition fees for high school students, the party’s spokesman on education said.

At present, parents and guardians pay some $600 million annually in tuition fees. But this system, Andrew Holness said, could be abolished by increasing the percentage of the budget to be allocated to education, while cutting costs in other areas.

The allocation to education in this year’s budget was $37 billion.

“We’re saying $600 million in a budget that is $37 billion is neither here nor there…we are committed to doing that [removing tuition fees] when we become the government, by increasing the allocation to education in the national budget from 11 to 15 per cent,” Holness said.

He was addressing the Rotary Club of St Andrew at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel in Kingston on Tuesday.

The Opposition spokesman on education told the gathering that the proposed three per cent increase in budgetary allocation to education would start in the new JLP government’s second year in office. In addition, he noted that while a JLP government would be committed to improving government’s efficiency and its revenue base, the budget would be structured differently with education given greater priority.

Meanwhile, he argued that local government did not need a ministry to function.

“All that needs to be done is for the Ministry of Finance to collect the taxes on behalf of local government, equalise it across the parish councils…those functions can be done through a small agency in the Office of the Prime Minister or devolved to the local government agencies themselves.

He said a government formed by his party would also regulate the auxiliary fees being charged by high schools, such as PTA fees, laboratory fees and the development fund.

“The schools’ administrations should be brought under some form of regulation when it comes to charging fees. They cannot be left up to themselves to determine what the auxiliary fees are,” he said.

In addition, Holness said the so-called transformation of the education system currently underway was “not focused”, and repeated the party’s position that early childhood education should be emphasised to prevent further illiteracy among members of the older population.

According to Holness, the present system perpetuated the “Two Jamaicas” – one in which children attend traditional high schools, which achieve better outcomes, and the other in which children attended non-traditional high schools with poor results. He said in the two core subjects, Mathematics and English, 67 and 54 per cent of students in traditional high schools achieved passing grades in the school leaving CSEC exams, respectively, compared to 18 and 16 per cent of students in non-traditional high schools.

Denying that his party’s support for ‘free’ education had been stolen from the governing People’s National Party (PNP), Holness said the JLP was committed to ‘freer’ education by the elimination of the tuition fees at the secondary level.

He read an excerpt from the JLP’s manifesto in 1944 which called for “compulsory education for all children up to 15 years, free scholarship to secondary schools, free books in elementary and secondary schools” to indicate that the party’s policy on education had not fundamentally changed in more than 60 years.