This week's announcement by Education Minister Maxine Henry-Wilson that the Government will deliver just under 17,000 new secondary school places by the end of this year is welcome.

It is also good news that approximately 3,300 of these places will be in the ministry's Region 6, which includes the parish of St. Catherine. Indeed, a shortage of secondary school places in this region contributed to last year's delay in announcing the result of GSAT (Grade Six Achievement Test), around which there was so much controversy.

But even as we applaud the minister's announcement, we, as she is, are aware that it does not represent a full, or even sufficient response to the problem of insufficient classroom space if Jamaica is to meet its mandate of universal delivery of education with a learner-friendly environment.

In fact, the administration in a study of this issue, projected that it would need an additional 243,000 secondary school places over the next decade or so, based on a standard student/teacher ratio of 1:25 and an additional or sixth year added to the secondary curriculum. This is considered important to significantly improve the country's poor educational performance at the secondary level, measured by results in the CXC exams, and to enhance the country's competitive position in the global economy. Without the additional year, the demand for additional secondary places would fall by about 56,000, to around 187,000.

But whichever of these numbers is in play the expansion won't be cheap. At the lower level of demand, the cost of the expansion is estimated at J$47.6 billion. If we provided a sixth year of secondary instruction, the cost for the additional accommodation would rise to J$61.8 billion.

And therein lies the rub - as well as the need for full, frank and credible talking by the administration about how it plans to fund this project and its overall plan for the transformation of education delivery.

Three years ago when the task force established by former Prime Minister Patterson to come up with a plan for the restructuring of the education system, they placed a price tag on their proposals, over a 10-year period, of $220 billion; or, a net increase to the education budget of about $22 billion a year, moving it to $52 billion.

In the last fiscal year, the Government dug intothe resources of the National Housing Trust (NHT) for $5 billion in what it promised was a one-off contribution to the programme. It has since offered little on how it plans to fund the programme.

Moreover, the public has been told nothing about the work or recommendations of a group that Mr. Patterson said he had appointed to come up with a funding mechanism for the programme. We do not know if the group ever met and whether it filed a report.

It is time, we think, for the administration to say something, if indeed it takes education seriously, and for there to be a genuine and urgent debate on the matter.

Early in the decade, former Opposition Leader Edward Seaga suggested the floating of education bonds and a former American ambassador at one time proposed legalising casinos and using the taxes from them to fund education. Let all ideas contend.