SOMETIMES TANGIBLE benefits rather than broken promises result from political one-upmanship. Mr. Seaga put free secondary education on the pre-general election agenda which obliged the PNP to counter with proposals of its own. Out of this exchange has now emerged an amalgam organised by Mrs. Maxine Henry-Wilson, now Minister of Education who has confirmed that she will shortly be resigning as General Secretary of the PNP to devote her full time to the education portfolio.
The billion-dollar secondary school fee fund recently announced by the Minister utilises the registration database and expertise of the new Programme of Advancement through Health and Education (PATH) to ensure that the poorest of the poor, some 38 per cent of the secondary school population, automatically receive free secondary school education. The remaining 62 per cent will have to continue paying some fees but no more than they paid last year even if this year's fees are increased. And if parents can prove inability to pay school fees, their needs will be assessed on a case by case basis by the schools involved.
Overall, therefore, the strategy is that no Jamaican child will be denied a secondary education because they are unable to pay for it. This is as it should be and we think that the basis of the new approach announced by the Minister is a workable one.
To ensure that the programme achieves its purpose of education for all to the secondary level, it is a condition for financial aid under all aspects of the programme that parents see to it that their children attend school on a regular basis. If attendance falls below 80 per cent, all free support will be cut off. We support the necessity for this kind of parental discipline.
Analogous with the calls for free secondary school education was the pre-election urging by some that government pay more attention to early childhood education - an idea that seems to be catching on and which formed a central part of the recommendations which the National Council on Education (NCE) submitted to the Minister.
Unless this necessary foundation in the education cycle is drastically improved, free secondary education will continue to turn out graduates who are neither literate nor numerate. We urge the minister to follow up on this.
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