Petrina Francis, Staff Reporter
Reid
Outgoing
president of the Jamaica Teachers' Association (JTA), Ruel Reid, has described
the Government's decision to cut back on the provision of technical and vocational
textbooks for secondary schools as a backward step.
Adelle Brown, the island's chief education officer, recently said that due to financial constraints and the increasing cost to purchase these books, the Ministry of Education and Youth would only be providing 25 per cent of technical and vocational books for the upcoming academic year.
"I think it is a backward step and it undermines the credibility of the transformation of education because that report (Task Force Report on Education) recommended an increased expenditure of an additional $22 billion per year," Mr. Reid said.
"It did not envision that you are going to cut back on the programme of providing textbooks," he added.
According to Mr. Reid, the majority of students who need the vocational textbooks are the ones who are underachieving and represent the poorest students.
"So are we going back to an elitist system?" he queried. "I do not agree with the policy; I think we have to look at these students and the needs that they have."
Book rental scheme
Last year, then Prime Minister P.J. Patterson announced that the Government would absorb the $1,000 that students used to pay for the book rental scheme.
Mr. Reid told The Gleaner that there has not been any real increase in the education budget and said the ministry was faced with increasing costs.
He noted the ministries of Finance and Education need to go back to the drawing board and decide on how they are going to fund the transformation of the education system.
