The Ministry of Education says it has released its fourth and final disbursement of close to $1.6 billion for the funding of schools from the infant to secondary levels, in accordance with its financial support plan for the year 2016/17.

The ministry has also announced that it will provide just over $8 billion for school operations for the upcoming 2017/18 school year in September.The announcements were made by Minister of Education, Youth and Information, Senator Ruel Reid, at a press conference yesterday at his Heroes Circle office in Kingston.Last year, the ministry changed its public school funding formula to four scheduled disbursements — the first tranche by the second week of June 2016; the second tranche to be disbursed in the second week of September; the third tranche in the second week of December; and the fourth tranche to be paid in the second week of April 2017.“There was such a debate last year in our change of funding formula and many persons thought we were going to bankrupt the system, the system was going to be ruined and we were going to run out of money and the worst was going to happen. I’m happy to report that we have been able to successfully implement this policy,” Reid told journalists.“The third tranche we did promise in December (2016), but that was actually paid earlier in November (2016) and I am therefore happy to report that the fourth and final tranche that we had, has been delivered on time — all secondary schools would have now received their fourth tranche, amounting to $1.321 billion,” Reid said.Hailing the achievement as a “very successful programme implementation”, Reid added that $259 million will be provided for infant, primary, all-age and junior high schools during the course of this week.The minister also stated that later this month, an additional $1.7 billion will be provided for the Programme of Advancement through Health and Education (PATH) feeding grant, which will allow for PATH students to receive meals for five days of the school week.Reid outlined that the ministry will continue to honour its commitment to increase funding for school operations for the upcoming 2017/18 academic year, with a budget of $7.2 billion for secondary schools, which will also be disbursed during the same times as the previous plan.The first tranche is expected to be disbursed in the second week of June 2017, the second tranche in the second week of September, the third in the second week of December, and the fourth in the second week of April 2018.In addition to the $7.2 billion in funding for secondary schools for the new school year, the minister stated that over $1 billion will be allocated to infant, all-age and junior high schools.Reid said that the ministry has also changed the per capita allocation at both the infant and primary levels, moving from $950 to $2,500 per student in the case of primary schools and $650 to $2,500 for infant schools.Yesterday, the minister also released information regarding the much-debated removal of auxiliary fees from schools, which was put into effect last year.“The total amount of auxiliary requests from parents of a figure of $5 billion was very much vaunted. The truth is what the schools actually asked for was not $5 billion but $2.1 billion. Parents did understand what we were saying, that they could still make their contributions to their schools, but it was not auxiliary fees, they were not mandatory, they were contributions, so parents made a total of $893,493,109.42 over the entire system,” Reid stated.He explained that the overall total of contributions in this regard was 42 per cent and indicated that the schools would have ended up in a much better position as the ministry would have given the schools more money.Reid added that many schools, in fact, would have collected more from parents, which is primarily why there is no longer any talk about financing and funding of schools as “they were very deliberate and had a very successful implementation”.The education minister stated that, going forward into the new financial year, things should be much clearer as there was a confidence issue about whether or not the Government would be able to live up to its commitment, but stressed that the new policy shift had been successfully implemented.He said the programme was even more successful because all the temporary staff “were funded for the first time”.He explained that more than $500 million was provided to make sure all extra teachers and other members of support staff were taken care of. Reid said that there were added benefits from the support of the Career Advancement Programme as well as the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) programme, where $100 million was provided for equipment. The minister added that TVET (Technical Vocational Education and Training) also received significant funding from the ministry, as well as ICT (information and communications technology).He stated that this year, about $200 million will be allocated to help with the renewing of ICT equipment and facilities, maintenance, support, and infrastructure.Reid also said that the ministry is investing heavily across all levels of the education system and that it is going to be holding the system accountable in terms performance.“We are just saying to the country, as a Government, we believe in the priority of education, we want a well-resourced education system and the Government is going to do what it can, as we look forward to help from both parents and other stakeholders… we want to lead the way as a Government to say we are prioritising education,” Reid stated.