Lovelette Brooks, News Editor

SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS who are facing criticism about the amount they charge for auxiliary fees have fired back at the Bruce Golding administration, claiming that its allocation to schools is merely 50 per cent of the minimum amount needed by schools to educate each child.

School funding sparked a broiling controversy last week when Prime Minister Golding told Parliament that principals who collected additional fees, outside of what the ministry paid, were "extortionists".

attack on credibility

In a statement yesterday, the central executive of the Jamaica Teachers' Association (JTA) said that the prime minister's statement was "extremely unfortunate and was a clear attack on the credibility of the administrators of these institutions". The JTA is demanding that the prime minister retract the statement and apologise to the principals.

Last year, the Government implemented its programme of paying the tuition fees for students in secondary schools and allocated $8,000 to schools for each child enrolled. This year, the Golding administration increased its allocation by 27 per cent, to $10,500, but when inflation is factored in, the real increase was 7.1 per cent.

UN Education Index rating

If Jamaica is to increase its United Nations Education Index rating, it will have to increase its yearly budget to educate each student by a whopping 100 per cent. Currently, the country is ranked 101, 70 places below its Caribbean neighbour Barbados, which has the highest literacy rate in the English-speaking Caribbean and ranks fifth in the world.

The United Nations Development Programme ranks the educational standard of countries based on a composite of factors including enrolment, literacy rate, access to education and per capita income spent on education.

This year, Jamaica is spending 11 per cent of its $489.5-billion budget on education, which is considered low compared to Barbados, which allocates between 18 and 20 per cent of its budget to education.

Government's per capita contribution to a student's secondary education is merely 50 per cent of the amount desired by schools, according to Michael Stewart, president of the Association of Principals and Vice-Principals.

"It's a drop in the bucket," says Stewart. He estimates that it would take at least $20,000 each year to educate each student in a secondary school.

"A number of schools would have to be closed by March if they were to be run on the $10,500 alone," Stewart tells The Sunday Gleaner. March is three months before the usual June end of the school year.

budgetary obligations

The huge gap that many schools face in meeting their budgetary obligations has forced them to charge parents an auxiliary fee, which has sparked controversy between the Government and many school administrators. These fees include the cost of identification cards, ties, parent-teacher association fees, and in some cases, special development fees.

Addressing Parliament last week, Education Minister Andrew Holness conceded that the auxiliary fees played an important role in keeping schools afloat, but stressed that increases in these fees must not be greater than the 19.9 per cent inflation rate.

He told the House that the Government was not aware of the real cost of educating a child at various levels in the educational system.

- Additional reporting by Daraine Luton

lovelette.brooks@gleanerjm.com