Some 7,235 school spaces are to be created for September and 45 secondary schools are to be removed from the shift system in three years, according to Claude Stewart, head of school facilities and infrastructure on the Education Transformation Team (ETT).

"We are hoping that within the next three years, once the funds become available, on an average, we are going to be able to build at most 20 schools per year. If we can build 10 per year, we would be able to remove (secondary schools from the shift system) in three years," Stewart told The Gleaner.

Scrapping the shift system

He said secondary schools would be the priority and the team would then seek to remove primary and all-age schools from the shift system. Some 116 public schools are still on the shift system. Eleven were removed last year.

The removal of schools from the shift system was one of the recommendations of the Task Force Report on Education. However, the education sector would need 187,190 spaces at the secondary level if this was to be achieved.

Meanwhile, Frank Weeple, executive director of the ETT, said 87 per cent of the ETT's budget has been spent on infrastructure.

Weeple said 6,500 new school spaces have been created so far. He said some 17,000 are on stream for September 2009.

petrina.francis@gleanerjm.com