Like Opposition leader Portia Simpson Miller's response to his termites-in-their-brains quip, we believe that school principals are making far too much of Prime Minister Golding's remark about 'extortion', relating to so-called 'auxiliary fees' charged by schools.

For, assuming that principals, and others who have weighed in against the prime minister, have a right to be peeved at his perceived personal attack, Mr Golding's remark raises a far more fundamental issue of policy, and one that under-pinned his party's campaign to win the Government: the question of how we finance education.

Missed the point

In that sense, the debaters have, so far, mostly expended hot air on a largely sterile issue. They have missed the real point. We hope for a move to the central issue when the education minister, Andrew Holness, meets today with school principals.

This latest quixotic charge at mirages by teachers was triggered by Mr Golding's recent statement in the House that the administration was not "going to allow schools to find some other ways of extorting" by insisting that parents pay fees other than in cases where institutions are being specifically reimbursed and at rates higher than allowed by the Government.

Such fees are, of course, not new. They have been part of the system for a long time, helping schools to finance their operations in the face of inadequate subventions from the Government.

Recently, it appears, many schools have been pushing up their 'auxiliaries' beyond last year's inflation rate of 20 per cent. Parents, facing straitened economic circumstances, are feeling the pinch.

Mr Holness has called some of the hikes "unreasonable and unexplained". Strong words indeed, if not as tough as his boss' observation about extortion.

But there needs to be a broadening of the context of the debate, beyond the Jamaica Teachers' Association's (JTA) lament of this "clear attack on the administrators" of educational institutions.

Indeed, among the Golding administration's primary initiatives in education, which helped his party win last September's general election, has been the removal of what the previous government euphemistically called 'cost-sharing'.

Stripped of the niceties, parents were asked to pay a portion of the tuition cost for their children in high schools. By removing that portion of the fee, the Government had to find perhaps another $1 billion, or less than two per cent of the overall education budget of $54.3 billion.

Affording 'free education'

This transference of cost-sharing, from individual parents to taxpayers collectively, did not change the fundamental equation: the inadequacy of funding to the education sector. Indeed, it has served to highlight the problem.

Many parents thought removing the fees would lighten their personal burdens. In some cases, though, the increased auxiliary fees are nearly at the level of the foregone tuition payments.

Perhaps, then, the real matter for the heads to place on the table at today's talk with Mr Holness, and Mr Golding if he is present, is whether we can really afford 'free education', or, as some would put the question, whether we can afford not to afford it - and how.

This is not a matter to be addressed in the context of partisan political considerations. Education is too important and our crisis in this area too deep, for that. The issue demands sober discourse.