Auxiliary fee policy is not about promoting freeness mentality
The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.
– Maximilien Robespierre
Nelson Mandela, former South African president, co-founder of the African National Congress’s Youth League, and freedom fighter extraordinaire famously said: “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” I agree.
Nelson Mandela, former South African president, co-founder of the African National Congress’s Youth League, and freedom fighter extraordinaire famously said: “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” I agree.
In recent days, there has been much hue and cry about the Administration’s proposal to increase the current allocation of $11,500 to $19,000 per student at the secondary level. Some are up in arms against the fulfilment of this pre-election commitment by the Jamaica Labour Party; only to secure political scalps. Others, maybe because of genuine ignorance, simply don’t understand the biting realities of the cost of education in a country which has been savagely mismanaged by the People’s National Party (PNP).
The PNP was in power for 23 of the last 27 years. The economic ineptitude of the PNP has caused poverty to be a veritable cancer in Jamaica. These statistics illustrate my point: “Some 1.1 million Jamaicans live below the poverty line.” (The Gleaner, March 26, 2014). “Thirty-five per cent of Jamaicans live as squatters.” (The Gleaner, July 11, 2012).
The PNP was in power for 23 of the last 27 years. The economic ineptitude of the PNP has caused poverty to be a veritable cancer in Jamaica. These statistics illustrate my point: “Some 1.1 million Jamaicans live below the poverty line.” (
The Gleaner, March 26, 2014). “Thirty-five per cent of Jamaicans live as squatters.” (
The Gleaner, July 11, 2012).
While the PNP presided over an economic model which resulted in molasses-type growth, and here I am being generous, our critical social infrastructure was brought to its knees. Merciless taxation was the PNP’s god, and making blood from the proverbial stone their preoccupation. Again, the numbers tell the sad story.
We must never forget these economic growth statistics from the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ); they testify to the failures of the PNP’s 18 years in office from 1989 to 2007 as seen in table 1.
From 2011-2014 the economy grew at an average 0.4 per cent under Dr Peter Phillips, our former minister of finance and
The Gleaner’s Man of the Year. The PIOJ says the economy grew by 0.8 in 2015. The JLP left the economy growing at 1.7 per cent in 2011. This was achieved during the worst global economic recession since the Great Depression of 1929-1939.
Dr Peter Phillips imposed $58 billion in new taxes during his time as finance minister.
The PNP’s slash-and-burn economic policies have brought, as some rural folk put it, ‘ruination’ to thousands of Jamaicans. This is the reality in which some who benefited from free education up to university are shouting at the top of their voices, ‘let them pay through whichever orifice’.
“It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do,”
– Edmund Burke.
It is obvious – except to those who wish to maintain the social and economic structures of a pre-colonial Jamaica, and/or otherwise remain enslaved by rancid political self-aggrandisement – that where the payment of fees at the secondary level is concerned, we are desperately in need of urgent affirmative action. It simply is a social and economic imperative.
Many school principals will admit that by February of each school year they struggle to pay for utilities and other crucial services. Why? Simply, millions of dollars in variant fees, which are pillars of their budgets, are not paid by parents.
Some would have us believe that the majority of parents who can’t pay are simply ‘wutless’ deadbeats who deliberately don’t want to honour their parental obligations. I don’t agree. The vast majority of Jamaicans are proud, honest people who want the best for their children.
Stigmatisation of thousands of children and their parents who can’t pay seems immaterial to those who say don’t change the current system of fees at the secondary level.
In the mix of discussions on the proposed fee relief to the secondary level, some have neglected to ask this important question: Whose children suffer most when their parents just cannot pay? The data as seen in table 2 is instructive.
It is axiomatic that the vast majority of those who can least afford the cost of education attend the upgraded, technical and agricultural high schools. These schools comparatively charge the lowest fees, but have the least levels of compliance. In some instances compliance is as low as 30 per cent. This reality has shadowed our education system for decades. The retort that children are not barred from attending for want of payment is simplistic.
How do we correct the fee anomaly? We implement a foundational shift. There are precedents.
Recall that the first great game-changer in Jamaican education arguably took place in 1957 when the then PNP took a serious interest in the education of the masses. In those days the PNP was a different animal from the one which was described last Sunday by PNP councillor Venesha Phillips thus: “We have not really been true to the cause because self-worth and pride have been gutted from our people and deliberately so.
“Our people today are not recipients of empowerment but instead they have become pawns used in the games by those who wish to create the PNP that they want to exist in.” –
Jamaica Observer, April 26, 2016
One of Jamaica’s doyens of education, Dr Ivan Lloyd, former minister of education, made it public that the education system was not serving the needs of the majority black population and pin-pointed that there needed to be a managed and seamless approach to the transition from primary to secondary school.
Many in the 1950s decried the efforts of Dr Lloyd. Doubtless some will say, well, it was a different time. When are times so ‘different’ that improvement to the quality of life of the majority becomes redundant?
Recall also in July 2007, former prime minister and distinguished fellow at the UWI, Mona, and Chancellor of University of Technology, Jamaica, Edward Seaga wrote about the watershed decisions in local education of the 1950s and 60s.
“Secondary schools at the time held their own entrance examinations which enabled children of parents with means to ‘buy’ entry in the event of failure to gain access by merit,” Seaga wrote. “To overcome this, a Common Entrance Exam (CEE) was introduced in 1957, which would select successful entrants on merit only. The 1957 education policy declaration was aimed at improving the enrollment of students entering secondary schools, particularly among those who were unable to afford the fees.
“According to Dr Lloyd, apart from the few scholarships made available by the Government prior to 1957 (130 free places in a total secondary school population of 10,000), ‘those who went to secondary schools were those who could afford to’. The main objective of this policy was to award free places to all students who, irrespective of the means of their parents, had achieved a minimum standard in the Common Entrance Examination, and for whom places could be found in high schools.
“The result of the CEE was vital to selection, irrespective of whether the student originated from fee-paying preparatory schools, or government free primary schools.
“However, the result did not match the expectation or intent. By 1961, 20,000 students were sitting the CEE. Of that total, only 978 or 46 per cent of 2,133 free places to secondary schools were won by students attending primary schools, while 1,155 or 54 per cent from preparatory schools received awards. Analysis of these results indicated that only one in 86 students from primary schools had a chance of winning a free place as compared to one in four students from preparatory schools.”
“Another conclusion can be drawn: 29 per cent of the students from private schools were successful, as compared to seven per cent of those originating from primary schools. Obviously there was a serious problem here, disproportionate entries.”
Dr Lloyd’s game changer earned the wrath of many ‘fine’ ladies and gentlemen.
In order to wrestle the foundations of the education system from groupthink, the great Edwin Allen came to the rescue. Allen, a champion of the poor, was minister of education during the JLP Government of the early 1960s. He introduced what was dubbed the 70:30 system and other foundational and functional policy changes that, to date, are unrivalled.
“Edwin Allen, minister of education in the Jamaica Labour Party Government elected in 1962, saw the problem of disproportionate entries which militated against children from poorer homes. To adjust this, Allen announced a 70:30 policy which reserved 70 per cent of the free places to secondary schools for students from primary schools who were successful in passing the minimum standard in the CEE; the remaining 30 per cent was allotted to students from private schools.
“Notwithstanding the much larger number of free places now available as a result of the increased ratio for entrance from primary to secondary schools, there were other formidable problems to overcome – the inadequate number of schools and school places. Only a minority of primary school graduates were able to be placed in the secondary school system.
“There was a lack of aptitude for secondary education among the majority of primary school students who gained access to the expanded secondary school system; the cost of education at the secondary level was largely unaffordable to poor parents.
“It was obvious that a considerable increase in secondary school accommodation would be necessary if all students from primary schools were to gain entrance. This problem was reported in the UNESCO Report on Jamaica’s education system in 1964. It had to be solved or the other reforms would be ineffective.
“Edwin Allen introduced a sweeping plan for education reforms in 1966 which he entitled ‘New Deal for Education in Independent Jamaica’. He announced an agreement with the World Bank to construct 50 [my insert, 41 were actually built] new secondary schools to augment the existing 47 schools at secondary level; 40 primary schools by the end of 1967 and an increase in the annual output of trained teachers from 350 to 1,000 by 1969. This was the first project of the World Bank in secondary education anywhere. By more than doubling the number of secondary places, this would considerably increase the enrolment into secondary schools.” – Edward Seaga,
The Gleaner, July 29, 2007.
Allen, like Dr Lloyd, and the then Administration faced gigantic opposition. Have times really changed?
Were it not for game changers like Allen and Dr Lloyd, our education system today would probably be rooted terminally in colonial dictates. There are some who seem quite content with a large chunk of our education system not achieving anywhere near its full potential. In this scenario the best teachers continually go to the best schools, the best schools get the best students, charge the highest fees, have the most resources, most co-curricular programmes, get the best official exit examination passes, develop the best brands and, therefore, stay at the top of the education totem pole.
Many who don’t see the current fee structure as an inhibitor to equity seem to ignore the reality that parents are asked to spend thousands of dollars on books, lunch, bus fare, and I could go on. The proposed policy is not about relieving parents of their obligations. It is not about promoting a “freeness mentality”, as former Education Minister Ronald Thwaites warned last week. Of course, we should not miss the supreme irony of Thwaites’s admonition since he also told us not so long ago that the “PNP has presided over the greatest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich since slavery”.
Education cannot be about who gets what, when and where. There cannot be an acceptance that a majority will fail and a ruler class system must persist.
Our education system must now move into a phase where there is an accepted expectation of success at all levels. “Children succeed in classrooms where they are expected to succeed. Low expectations are often duly rewarded.” –
The Economist, August 17, 2013.
The excerpt below from an article titled: ‘Best and brightest’, in
The Economist of August 17, 2013 illustrates that revolutionary results are possible in education, no matter the historical and other hindrances. Bold decisions are a prerequisite.
“Ms Ripley credits Poland’s swift turnaround to Miroslaw Handke, the former minister of education. When he entered the post in 1997, Poland’s economy was growing but Poles seemed destined for the low-skilled jobs that other Europeans did not want. So he launched an epic programme of school reforms, with a new core curriculum and standardised tests. Yet his most effective change was also his wooliest: he expected the best work from all of his pupils. He decided to keep all Polish children in the same schools until they were 16, delaying the moment when some would have entered vocational tracks. Poland’s swift rise in PISA rankings is largely the result of the high scores of these supposedly non-academic children.”
We could also learn a few lessons from South Korea, Finland, and Poland. Note, I said learn, not ape.
Today, Poland’s education system is rated among the top five in the world. Where was it situated less than two decades ago? “In fact, half of rural adults had completed no more than primary school in 2000.” –
The Economist, August 17, 2013.
If Virtue and Knowledge are diffus’d among the people, they will never be enslav’d. This will be their great security. –
Samuel Adams