THE ESTIMATES of Expenditure for the new fiscal year tabled in Parliament by Dr. Omar Davies, Minister of Finance, shows a 24 per cent increase over last year in the budget allocation for education which goes up from $30 billion to $38 billion. With inflation running at about 12 per cent per annum this increase is not as substantial as it may seem.
Critics of the present set of educational priorities have been clamouring for at least 10 per cent of the education budget to be allotted to the early childhood sector and it remains to be seen whether this will be forthcoming.
Despite high-sounding promises, only four per cent of the education budget last year went to early childhood education, the weakest link in the education chain, the neglect of which has been causing serious breakdowns in the remaining primary, secondary and tertiary sectors. Even if $3.8 billion is allocated to early childhood education, it seems unlikely that there would be enough to tackle the problems of the so-called community basic school system which caters to a school population of 140,000 mostly children of the poor between the ages of one and six years old.
This is the most vital period in a child's education for unless children are given emotional and intellectual stimulation by properly trained teachers in a hospitable environment there is little hope of them being able fully to benefit from a primary school education. This has a direct bearing on which child will get acceptable marks in the GSAT exams which, in turn, predestines which stream will get into traditional secondary schools and which will be relegated to the non-traditional secondary schools with pass rates in the CXC exams miserably low.
In a sense, the Government has finessed the crisis in early childhood education by establishing the Early Childhood Commission which is mandated to set proper standards for and regulate the basic school system which nevertheless remains in private hands. The Commission needs to make it clear how fast properly trained teachers will be licensed to teach in basic schools and how much money will be needed overall to get the system up to an acceptable standard.
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