The Editor, Sir:

With the start of the new school year comes the now perennial advertisements from the long and growing list of privately owned schools followed by the many cries and complaints about the lack of resources for the publicly run ones. Both are manifestations of privatisation and some would even suggest globalisation.

Education, like other social services, is a public service that, if not delivered by governments (public sector) in the main, is inevitably placed out of the pockets of most of the population and, as most of the peoples of the world are poor, it is they who are disenfranchised. The case is no different here in Jamaica.

Starving the education system

Successive governments have consistently starved the public education system of the necessary resources of benches, classroom spaces, adequate toilet facilities, chalk, water, electricity and the list goes on, thus creating a 'reason' for the delivery of education by private hands - privatisation.

Privatisation as a model for the delivery of quality public service is not a bad thing if it happens because of a real and genuine need to do so, but must not be as a result of a created or fabricated 'need' to divest. The continued starving of the education system provides an opportunity for entrepreneurialism and profit-seeking, both of which are good for the investor but bad for the student.

Polo-shirt high schools

Most of the schools being advertised today are at the secondary level, for students who spent at least five years already in a secondary school, but who for various reasons failed to secure the requisite passes for advancement. These reasons I submit could be associated with the knowledge that there is a 'second chance' in the 'polo shirt and jeans' high schools and the less than best efforts of some teachers, many of whom are themselves operators and teachers in the privately run ones; added to that of course is the more attractive pay packets available.

If indeed we are going to educate ourselves out of the sorry state our country finds itself in, then the state must be prepared to allocate much more resources to the delivery of quality educational services to our children, and privatisation cannot be the way.

I am, etc.,

WAYNE JONES

jacisera@cwjamaica.com

President

Jamaica Civil Service Association

Via Go-Jamaica