Educator and scientist Dr Dennis Minott has slammed the Education Transformation Team (ETT), as well as former education minister Maxine Henry-Wilson for departing from the intent of the Task Force on Educational Reform and is warning that the programme – which has already used up over $4 billion but will not meet its targets – will unwisely spend another $2 billion being pumped in by the Inter-American Development Bank if it is not realigned to more strategic thinking.

Minott, who two weeks ago refused to accept an award for his work as a member of the task force, said he felt that the team worked in vain, as its recommendations have, in most cases, not been implemented and “the thrust of the task force report has been diverted to what seems to be a different agenda”.

Minott declined the award at the National Council of Education awards dinner on December 3 at the University of the West Indies where Frank Weeple, director of the ETT, admitted that key performance targets for primary and secondary schools to be achieved by 2015 will be missed.

Weeple blamed the long, painstaking and expensive process of providing needed infrastructure as well as setbacks to schools by Hurricane Dean and Tropical Storm Gustav for the targets being out of reach. He said 90 per cent of the ETT resources, or $4.5 billion, has been spent on infrastructure.

But his address annoyed Dr Minott, and the educator walked out of the function.

“When I heard Frank Weeple speaking the other evening, it suddenly hit me that, likeable fellow though he is, Mr Weeple had failed spectacularly, and he was giving that speech to justify and to nationalise these failures and the departures from the intent,” Minott told the Sunday Observer. “Consequently, when it came time for the awards, I couldn’t in good conscience accept an award at a function in which failure had been so slickly repackaged as something coming from the task force on which I sat.”

Added Minott: “I had hoped that the intent of reforming the system in a dramatic way, while incrementally paying attention to the infrastructure on which the system operates, would have been the way things went. And especially in the context of scarce funds, I was very surprised and I felt a sense of betrayal, and I think that sense of betrayal is shared by many members of the task force, that $4.5 billion out of $5 billion from the National Housing Trust could have been spent on stones and bricks and bits of board and nails and contractors.”

The decision of the previous Government to dip into the Housing Trust’s funds to pay for the programme caused a lot of controversy, especially when it was revealed that the money would have been used to upgrade infrastructure.

Minott said that while the members of the task force recognised that there was a need for infrastructure, they felt that it could have been incrementally improved, while the bulk of the upfront money was spent on getting the educational product improved as quickly as possible.

“That was clearly not done and it was contrary to the intent of the task force,” said Dr Minott, CEO of the Association of Quietly Excellent Scholars and Thinkers (A-QuEST), a private programme that facilitates the matriculation of Jamaican students to the world’s best colleges and universities at the undergraduate level.

Henry-Wilson, the education minister in February 2004 when then Prime Minister P J Patterson appointed the task force, as well as her permanent secretary, bore the brunt of Minott’s criticism.

According to Minott, the minister and the permanent secretary “either did not understand the task force report or something worse”.

“I think it was too convenient to spend that vast amount of money on infrastructure just before an election,” said Minott, who made it clear that there was no crookedness involved in the spend.

“It was just wrong-headed and unwise,” he said, and charged that it was done “after what seemed to have been several attempts to interfere with the task force”.

According to Minott, people who were not members of the task force were sent by the then minister to sit with the task force, but the members felt that “their interventions were very shallow and pre-set”.

That, he said, resulted in the task force asking for the non-members to be removed.

“We felt that they were attempting to drive the task force in a way that none of us saw as naturally coming out of the wide ranging and open consultations that the prime minister had tasked us with,” said Minott.

Several attempts to contact Henry-Wilson for a comment failed yesterday as her phone was constantly busy.

Among the task force recommendations that Dr Minott said have not implemented are:

. the setting up of regional educational authorities that would shift the responsibility of running schools to those authorities and to principals;

. a crash programme to train young school leavers as teachers’ assistants to help address the issue of inappropriate levels of literacy and numeracy as a sort of shock treatment to the system;

. the reassigning of education officers – some into the classrooms and others to provide for the needs of the new era;

. identifying the needs of the students, especially in special education;

. the provision of child guidance – not counselling. Having within the schools people who are sufficiently au fait with where education is heading; and

. the sharing of reports from panel visits with parents, students and the political directorate at the local level.

“So the accountability systems that we sought to put in place have not been put in, and $4.5 billion of scarce money has been spent and now another $2.4 billion is about to come in and could go the same way,” Minott lamented.

“I have no doubt that things can be put back on line, but the train is completely delayed,” he said.