What’s Nigel Clarke’s word on private schools?
IT IS unthinkable that Karl Samuda’s statement last month would be the Government’s final word on the matter, yet there are no signs of structured talks between the Holness administration and operators of private schools that have been bludgeoned financially by the COVID-19 crisis.
If, indeed, Mr Samuda, the de facto education minister, had the final say, we urge the Government to rethink its position. For as Owen Speid, the head of the teachers’ union, observed, it would be a matter of being “penny wise and pound foolish”.
“It will cost us much more if those institutions die,” Mr Speid told a meeting of the Rotary Club of St Andrew.
There are some critical statistics that should place this issue in its larger context. Based on the education ministry’s 2019 data, there are, in Jamaica, nearly 2,000 so-called basic schools, mostly community -based, sometimes rough-and-ready institutions, that provide the first tier of learning for nearly 70,000 children, or approximately 73 per cent of the students enrolled in early childhood education. Basic-school children represent approximately 16 per cent of enrolment in the overall education system.
Without the basic schools, the island’s early childhood system would collapse, a fact recognised by the Government with its efforts over the last decade and a half in assisting in upgrading their teachers. In some instances, basic schools have been integrated into the Government’s infant school system, but the build out has been too slow.
Basic schools apart, there are another 140 or so private, better structured kindergartens. These accommodate another 6,000 children, or six per cent of early childhood enrolment. Put another way, basic schools and private kindergartens account for nearly 80 per cent of early childhood enrolment. Government schools, therefore, host only 20 per cent of the early childhood learners.
At the primary level, private preparatory schools – where parents who can afford it are willing to pay for education outcomes that are generally better than at government institutions – account for more than 24,000 students. That is nearly 11 per cent of the students at that level of the education system. Then, there are another 5,000 or so students in private secondary schools, representing about two and a half per cent of secondary enrolment.
STRUGGLED TO FIND PLACES
Should all the private schools, with their 105,000 plus students and over 8,000 teachers, shut down, the Government would be hard pressed to fill the gap. Indeed, in recent years, when a handful of private high schools have gone under, the education ministry has struggled to find places for their students in the public system.
Many private schools now face that danger. Having been forced to close because of the Government’s initiatives to slow the growth of COVID-19 and faced with parents without jobs and no income from which to pay school fees, private schools have been limping along, despite, in most cases, their teachers, like workers in other sectors, taking pay cuts. Some schools might not be able to reopen for the new school year in September.
Last month, Mr Samuda ruled out government financial support for these institutions. “If we were in a position financially to help private schools, I am sure the minister of finance would reach out to them,” he said. “But we are not, and it is what it is – a private school funded by private capital. It’s a business.”
Two things are striking about that statement. One is the absence of advocacy for schools and education by Mr Samuda, which suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the education ministry and the minister’s place within it in a country like Jamaica, struggling to improve its lagging educational outcomes. The education minister, in the circumstance, would be expected to be aggressively seeking to maintain the capacities of the system. And in a circumstance such as this one, the tensions should be telling between himself and the finance minister, spilling from the Cabinet to the public sphere.
The second factor is that Minister Samuda appears to misconstrue the economics of the private education system, believing that it is an exceedingly profitable enterprise. A few, mostly specialised, private schools may have been making good money. Most barely survived, evidenced by the frequency of their collapse.
Nigel Clarke, the finance minister, appreciates education of itself and for its centrality in the building of a resilient 21st century economy, one that can bounce back from the likes of COVID-19. In the advent of the pandemic, Dr Clarke has stood by other sectors of the economy. He is unlikely to give Mr Samuda the last word on education.