Education demands more of the budget

Apr 03, 2012 Editorial

The national budget is out. There are allocations for every major sector with the most going to agriculture, the largest sector in the country. However, there is evidence that the major focus should be on education.
The budget does place some emphasis on the development of education but from the point of view of making sure that certain school buildings are rehabilitated and that furniture are repaired or are in adequate supply for the growing number of children entering the institution.
We see a mere $8 million going to teacher training. One would have expected an expansion that would have necessitated more money for the recruitment of staff, the development of additional facilities and perhaps, facilities for practical learning.
The scope of expenditure speaks to providing microwave ovens, desks, chairs, beds and brush cutters. With the focus on technical and vocational training one would have expected to see a corresponding increase in the preparation of the people to man the various centres. Indeed there is the Government Technical Institute which to its credit has attracted $63 million.
The sad fact is that the bulk of the teachers are part time lecturers, people who must seek employment elsewhere and give what little time they have left to imparting whatever skills they have. In the past the people who were employed in the area of technical education were trained by the teacher training institution.
The training meant that they were exposed to every aspect of education development—child psychology, the basic skills such as language, principles of teaching, mathematics and of course, sociology. The technical education teacher was a rounded person.
Times have changed from the days when technical education was intended to prepare a young person to become masons and carpenters and motor mechanics. Today, technical education is also about producing entrepreneurs who in turn would train those who may not have been academically inclined and who, because of enough opportunities and because of poor parental guidance, are roaming the streets and making a nuisance of themselves and tormenting the society.
The budget allocates $534 million to technical and vocational education. This money is to complete two centres and to allow for institutional strengthening. Whatever that means we can only conclude that the authorities must surely be using some of that money to recruit staff for the existing technical institutions and perhaps to train staff to man the new centres.
The focus on education cannot be over estimated. As if to rectify a critical shortage at the most critical level of the school – the entrance level—the government is spending $600 million to upgrade nursery and primary schools.
What is not clear is the focus on teachers to operate at this level. We had been saying for some time now that we have been concentrating our best teaching skills in the areas where they focus on those students about to enter the worlds of work. However, there is the argument that if there is no foundation; if the children are not properly grounded then by the time they are at school leaving age they would have assimilated precious little.
The money allocated for the more than 1,000 nursery and primary schools may not be a lot but if it does create conditions to make school comfortable then we may see a turnaround in the fortunes of the education sector.
We surely do not want a situation that currently occurs in the health sector into which the government is pumping money and is not seeing the results. It has spent a fortune training young girls to be nurses and is finding that less than 20 per cent of them actually pass the most basic of examinations. Those who are failing in an area that does not demand too much academic skill are the products of the very education system on which we focus.
Surely there is a link between education and every other facet of life—health services included. The government may wish to move away from some notions and focus even more money on education. We may find that what is passing for remarkable achievements would be really nothing spectacular.

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