By Glenda Anderson, Staff ReporterREPAIRS AND maintenance projects at several levels of the island's education system have been put on hold or discarded following massive chops in funds promised by Government.
Primary schools, which had been targeted to receive an estimated $52 million to deal with equipment, furniture and repairs and maintenance, will receive less than half this amount, while at the tertiary level provisions for repairs and equipment were cut from $5 million to $130,000.
Technical high and vocational schools were the hardest hit with repairs and maintenance allocations reduced from $10 million to $500,000. The provision of equipment and furniture budget of $11 million was completely removed.
Further, figures from the recently released Supplementary Estimates of expenditure show that no funds have been approved of $600,000 originally allotted for the provision of furniture and equipment for basic schools. Technical services director with the Education Ministry, Lauriston Wilson, in an interview with The Sunday Gleaner on Thursday confirmed the reductions, noting that administrators had dealt only with priority areas.
"We have addressed the most critical cases, sanitation, water supply, security and safety," he said but added, "there is still a great need for furniture."
LIMITED FUNDING
In addition, he said, some plans had not been completed because of the limited funding.
"With the all-age schools (which had been upgraded to primary and junior high schools) we didn't do some of what we had planned to do. We weren't able for example to put in the laboratories and workshops that we had wanted. At the technical and vocational levels we had planned to replace the roofs of some schools and this we were just not able to do," Mr. Wilson said.
Teachers complained to The Sunday Gleaner that although furniture was delivered to some primary schools, not enough was available for all students. In one case, 30 desks were delivered for a class of 45 students at a Corporate Area primary school.
The impact of the devastating blow to the island's basic school sector, however, was cushioned by reliance on the Early Childhood Fund, and other sources.
Under the Early Childhood Fund, proceeds from lottery companies have contributed to the purchase of classroom equipment; the provision of scholarships for teachers to attend training colleges; a pilot project for the use of computer technology as teacher support in curriculum delivery and physical upgrading of institutions. Mr. Wilson said, all 29 government-owned infant schools were renovated despite the reductions.
Last year the Ministry approved the award of 42 contracts to carry out maintenance work mostly in primary and all-age schools throughout the island. Most of the work had included correcting problems of sanitation, repairing or replacing roofs and ensuring that schools have adequate water supplies.
Mr. Wilson said the maintenance programme was ongoing wherever funds became available.
A little over $14 million was provided in the 2003/2004 estimates of expenditure for the maintenance programme at the primary level and $37 million for furniture and equipment.
In addition, a grant of $10,000 was to have been provided to each primary and all-age school to carry out its own small repairs, with $20,000 allocated at the secondary level. The allocation to schools was to have been in addition to $1 million provided to each regional office to enable them to respond to emergency situations.
Education Minister Maxine Henry-Wilson maintained, however, that the Government's education thrust has not been abandoned. Commenting on the impact of the cuts on schools, Minister Henry-Wilson said, "I don't think there has been much in terms of consequences to the schools. It has been tight but we have been able to redeploy funds and make alternative arrangements. For Grades 1-3 in some schools we have been able to use the Culture, Health, Arts Sports and Education Fund (CHASE), for repairs to primary schools we have used JSIF (Jamaica Social Investment Fund). But the other issue is that we have had significant salary increases, and sometimes it is that we have to make that trade-off, but we have tried to ensure we put some things in place, schools have received what we said we would give to them, nothing has been abandoned."
