Martin Henry
Prime Minister Golding's labelling of school administrators who have made auxiliary fees mandatory as "extortionists" is much more than "extremely unfortunate", as the JTA has mildly put it. It is out of order and an abuse of authority.
It is the Government which is behaving in extortionary ways. And not only in this instance.
In its literal meaning from its Latin roots, 'extortion' means to twist out. The extortioner demands something for nothing and uses force to extract it. In one specific meaning, extortion means to get money, etc, from someone by misuse of authority. And that is what I mean here when I say that the Government is behaving like an extortioner. This is nothing new or specific to this administration. On the same matter of school-fee policy, I have had reason to chastise the last administration. And the extorting action of Government in education flourished under Michael Manley's failed free-education policy.
Unethical
There is something fundamentally unethical in saying to schools, 'The Government is unable to finance the full cost of education, but we are nonetheless going to make education 'free' and you cannot make it mandatory for students to pay the shortfall. If you do, we will bawl you out as extortionists. The last PNP government made it abundantly clear that schools were expected to supplement an inadequate state subvention with fees, but no child was to be turned away who could not pay. This in itself was a major set-up for no one to pay.
And the Government did not honour its obligation to make up the full shortfall. School administrators were left in the unenviable position of determining parents' ability to pay and meeting lofty education policy goals without adequate financing from Government or parents. This JLP administration has gone further along the same road.
There are now two sets of communities and parents - and two sets of schools delivering two sets of results. And stupid government policy is bound to maintain the divisions. There are those who understand that auxiliary fees are absolutely necessary to supplement Government's six-for-a-nine subvention and who willingly pay it. And those same parents turn around and form vibrant PTAs which undertake fund-raising activities well beyond fees.
And there are those who 'can't afford it' and who, with the Government, see auxiliary fees as extortion and don't pay it. While there is a class relationship to the division, it is not purely a poverty issue. It is more profoundly an attitudinal issue strengthened by the politics of entitlement, which the prime minister's 'unfortunate' comment, reminiscent of Manley of the '70s, has only strengthened. Campion will, therefore, remain Campion, and Camperdown will remain Camperdown.
Backing 'extortionary' fees
The Camperdown principal, Cynthia Cooke, said as much in her Sunday Gleaner article last Sunday. Interestingly, the PTA of Cornwall College, the school singled out to be directly attacked by the prime minister, not its school administrators, has published its democratic decision to back the 'extortionary' fees.
School administrators have done their homework, but, although armed with powerful data are nonetheless battle shy. According to Principal Cooke of Camperdown, a 2003 study [five years ago, during which time two administrations have continued driving down the value of the Jamaican dollar and raising inflation] calculated that it took $15,000, not including the salary component, to provide minimum resources and facilities for the education of one secondary-school student. This year, the Government is providing about $10,000 of non-salary support per student. Camperdown is 'extorting' $6,000 of auxiliary fees per student, while its electricity bill has moved from $200,000 per month to $500,000.
Since the precipitous removal of tuition fees immediately upon this Government taking office last September, Michael Stewart, president of the Association of Principals and Vice-Principals, says the compliance rate for the payment of auxiliary fees, already a low 60 per cent, has fallen to 45 per cent.
But someone has to pay for 'free' education; and since the Government can't, and parents don't have to, the burden falls on school administrators to make blood out of rock stone. Suppliers too, like the JPS, unable to collect on schedule, are forced to extend credit and bear loss.
But the main victims of the Government's extortion are the poor students. The Sunday Gleaner did some brilliant contextualising reportage on the issue on its front page last Sunday: The Government is now contributing only 50 per cent of the estimated real cost for a proper secondary education. The schools, backed by the JTA, should call the bluff of the Government and close when the money done.
Low rank
Jamaica is ranked 70 places below Barbados on the UNDP Education Index, based on a composite of factors including enrolment, literacy level, and per capita expenditure on education. While Barbados spends between 18-20 per cent of its annual budget on education, this year, Jamaica has allocated 11 per cent.
What the Government is paying for in education, in a political sleight of hand as was played by the Manley government of the 1970s, is access, not quality. What the Government is ultimately 'extorting' from the system is quality.
Face-saving, damage control manoeuvres are under way following the fallout from the prime minister's Freudian slip. But really, there is no change of heart. And as I said earlier, education is not the only place where Government extorts in this manner. The same story can be told in health where the shortfall in 'free' health-care financing is extracted from staff and patients. Recent interactions with the leadership of the national health services have made this abundantly clear. People are literally holding the system together with uncompensated overtime and creative juggling.
In national security, police officers are being forced, against the Government's own labour laws, to hold the law-and-order services together with long uncompensated overtime, and by working in grossly substandard conditions. And citizens pay in poor service and lack of security.
The Government is not only misusing its authority to extract uncompensated value from many of its servants and suppliers and from the people; it has now, for cheap political mileage, taken to cursing and abusing those who are trying, against the odds, to hold a resource-starved education system together.
Martin Henry is a communications consultant. Feedback may be sent to medhen@gmail.com or columns@gleanerjm.com.
