This newspaper welcomes the long-overdue decision to make it easier for impoverished Jamaicans to gain access to the social safety net Programme of Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH).

We are told a study has shown what Jamaicans with ears to the ground have long known that many who are most in need are not on PATH — often because of cumbersome bureaucracy. Also, some still on the programme are no longer in need; and some never should have been registered in the first place.

Minister of Labour and Social Security Pearnel Charles Jr says the changes to PATH will “help people who need that help the most…”

Mr Charles, no doubt, knows that for the changes to effectively help people most in need, responsible ministry employees must do what they are supposed to do. Close monitoring and supervision will be absolutely essential. Improvement and renewal of the programme can’t be left on autopilot.

Also, this newspaper makes no apology for arguing that those requiring most targeted help under PATH should be children. Economic hardships — underpinned by extreme socio-economic inequities — largely explain why so many attend school for only two or three days per week. There is not enough money to cover the cost of school books, transportation, meals. And when there are multiple children, pauperised caregivers are left to decide who goes to school and who doesn’t.

For those reasons, many Jamaican children enter high school illiterate and, years later, exit, barely better off, if at all. Hopefully, by their late teens, they will have gained marketable skills in their schools’ workshops.

We agree that a major difficulty undermining Jamaica’s public education system is extreme, chronic under-resourcing at pre-primary levels — as outlined by Jamaica Teachers’ Association President Mr Mark Malabver and others. It needs to be addressed.

Ultimately, though, it all goes back to socio-economic inequities. As the 2021 Orlando Patterson report pointed out — borrowing from Mr Edward Seaga’s social commentary of six decades earlier — Jamaica’s education system suffers badly from the long-running difference in treatment of “haves” and “have-nots”.

In 1972, when then newly-elected Prime Minister Michael Manley challenged young, educated people to teach their elders to read, more than 60 per cent of adult Jamaicans were said to be illiterate — a product of social inequalities going back to slavery.

That extraordinary adult literacy campaign — which morphed into JAMAL — helped, but the problem remained since our public schools continued to churn out illiterates.

So what’s to be done in today’s Jamaica, with our badly underserved education system made more complex and challenging by hurricanes Melissa and Beryl, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic?

It seems to us that in terms of literacy and numeracy we are facing a worsening emergency, requiring urgent attention.

Our public schools and teachers from pre-primary to secondary levels need all available help for the long term. But also, we see the immediate need for a sustained, all-embracing, non-political, mass mobilisation of educated Jamaicans to volunteer spare time in helping those willing to learn.

At the risk of seeming naïve, we recommend a programme akin to the adult literacy campaign of 50-odd years ago.

We wonder, is there the will and determination among our leaders to get such a programme done?