Edward SeagaAS ANOTHER school year begins, new hopes emerge for beginners as well as those who have been in school before. Parents usually have higher hopes than students because they are further from the realities of schooling. Their hopes are also highest with the youngest children because those have not yet proven to be disappointments.
A reality check with Jamaican parents, would undoubtedly show that their expectations of what is to be gained from schooling decreases over the years. Perhaps, most of them are just happy to have somewhere to park their children for the day and then literally hope to God that they learn something. At least, in school, they are far more likely to stay out of trouble than if they were 'running loose'.
Their approach is not far from the truth. Indeed, it is probably better than the eventual out turn of the performance record at school. The picture is not bright. It is dismal, but rightfully so.
SUCCESS AND FAILURE
Let us look at the numbers of success and failure.
On an annual basis, some 50,000 births occur each year. A record of what happens to these 50,000 as they proceed to age 16 years when graduation from secondary school should occur, is instructive and shocking. A small number, of course, die at infancy; others, a great many, drop out of school or do not attend any secondary educational institutions. The latter attend all-age schools, which carry the student to age 15, one year short of the CXC graduation exam. Still others learn little at school and are excluded from sitting the CXC exam. Finally, of those who sit the exam, a huge segment fail to succeed. Illustration by way of the diagrammatic tree below will fill out the numbers.
At the end of the line, age 16, when the CXC graduation exam is taken, only 7,600 of the original 50,000 in the age cohort pass, that is, 15 per cent of the original number. Hence, 85 per cent fail to make it after dropping out of the education system, not being enrolled in any secondary school, or lack of academic ability.
We are entitled to ask what kind of education system is this that from a 16-year age cohort of 50,000, only 15 per cent successful performers and 85 per cent non-performers are produced. Each year, this scenario has been repeated in the past and is likely to continue into the future if there is no real change.
From the successful 15 per cent (7,600) of the age cohort, there are some who go on to higher education. The remainder either have job prospects or further their education with additional training aimed at qualifying for higher education institutions.
Among the unsuccessful 85 per cent, 43,400 are unemployed girls and those who become teenage mothers and boys who, having little employment opportunities for unskilled work, either gravitate idly to shop steps and street corners, become hustlers, or enter a life of crime.
WASTE OF HUMAN RESOURCES
What a waste of human resources! Can the nation afford to continue to develop only 15 per cent of its youth while 85 per cent go to waste? These shocking results underlie the urgency for an education system which can reverse the figures providing 85 per cent performers and 15 per cent non-performers.
The 85 per cent, or 43,400, non-performers are from poor households where great sacrifices are made to send children to school in the expectation that they will emerge from the process with skills to establish a career and to be of help to the elderly in their golden years.
According to the Report of the Task Force on Educational Reform, the cost to these poor households of this failed process is $42,000 per student per annum, in secondary and primary schools. Poor people pay $19 million to send each age group of students to school, or $190 million over the 10-year career period of primary and secondary schools. By comparison, Government spends $30,000
per student per annum, which
is significantly less than households.
The task force report recommends a considerable increase in government expenditure on education amounting to $520 billion over 10 years, or $52 billion per annum. This $52 billion is 73 per cent more than the $30 million spent last fiscal year.
The budget this year as set out by the report requires $47 billion. It is $17.7 billion short, of which $5 billion was annexed from the National Housing Trust (NHT). The balance of $12.7 billion has not been sourced. So, the reform programme has got off to a bad start. I was not surprised about the inability to fund the programme. I predicted it when it was outlined to the public.
The critical point to be examined is whether the reform programme can be funded. It cannot be done from taxation. Loans would throw out the fiscal deficit. It is on this basis that Government proposes to annex surplus resources from the NHT and now, according to a recent move, the National Insurance Scheme. These two funds are to be raided if the public allows this to happen. But the amounts acquired in this way cannot total $22 billion per annum. There will still be a substantial deficit. So the prospects of full financing are still dim. I suggested casino gaming to help close the gap.
If the gap is not closed, the new programme will fall short of bailing out the 85 per cent of young people whose lives are now buried in sinking sand. This is a fearful thought for the future.
The Government is putting itself into unnecessary financing problems. I have on several occasions indicated that the sacrifices the people of Jamaica are being asked to make are unnecessary. But they are unavoidable as long as Government continues to pursue an inflation targeting financial model. A switch to a fixed exchange rate model would dramatically lower interest rates, as it has in all CARICOM countries on the Fixed Exchange Rate model where the lending rate to clients at the bank is in single figures.
Two things follow automatically from the proposed model: Low inflation rates and a substantial increase in funds available from the budget to meet critical financing, such as the new Education Reform Programme, and reducing debt. This is based on the fact that with the significant lowering of interest rates, prices would fall and Government would use far less of its recurrent budget to service debt, leaving a considerable surplus. This surplus would be the source of education and other critical funding.
NEED TO CHANGE
ECONOMIC MODEL
All but four of the CARICOM countries operate on a fixed exchange rate. They are all doing much better than Jamaica. The four delinquents are Jamaica, Guyana, Suriname and Haiti, all of which are doing poorly economically.
What is required to make the switch from an inflation targeting to a fixed exchange rate model is only political will and legislative action, not money.
If a change of economic model is not introduced to replace the economically frustrating and stagnating model with which the Government has persevered for a dozen years with little gain and much pain, the Education Reform Programme and other worthwhile plans will all go down the drain.
In particular, 85 per cent of all the young people of Jamaica who are underperformers and underachievers and who are wasting their lives, will go down with the sinking ship. But you can count on government politically to make the sailors cheer while they are sinking the ship. To a government that puts politics above everything else to win elections, that is all that matters.
It's a pity that opinion leaders and the people of the country fail to understand and lack the vision to see what is happening to them.
Edward Seaga is a former prime minister. He is now a Distinguished Fellow at the University of the West Indies. Email: odf@uwimona.edu.jm.
