Peter Espeut | We need a resurrection

There is much that is worthy of comment in the public domain, so here are my observations on three current issues.

The Bank of Jamaica (BoJ) has announced new service standards to be met by commercial banks which operate automated banking machines (ABMs). Ninety per cent of machines must be working 95 per cent of the time, and no ABM in Kingston or tourist areas must be out of money for longer than one hour, and in rural Jamaica no ABM must be out of money for longer than three hours.

Sounds good? Read the fine print.

The BoJ is not going to drive around to monitor the ABMs; they are going to depend on the banks to tell them how many of their ABMs are not working, and how many are out of cash and for how long. They expect the banks to incriminate themselves!

But hear the next part: if the banks breach the new service standards there is no financial penalty. The most the banks will suffer is increased “supervisory concerns” and “supervisory consequences”. Sounds like a slap-on-the-wrist to me.

Of course the banks are very happy with these arrangements! It will be business as usual as they collect their fees and make superprofits.

SHOW RELUCTANCE

The Government continues to show its reluctance to keep the private sector in line. We who are concerned about the health of our natural environment are very familiar with this syndrome. We know what secret campaign contributions can do.

We pay billions of dollars in salaries to these regulatory agencies to pretend to regulate by issuing toothless standards, which they don’t monitor and don’t enforce. God help us, for the Government certainly won’t!

The massive swing away from the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) in the February local government elections demands quick action by the party if they wish to remain in power for the next five years. There is no other way to read the increase in the minimum wage announced by the prime minister in his budget speech.

Of course, such an increase is inflationary, yet we heard not a peep from the minister of finance about that. What we saw last week was the minister of finance putting on indefinite hold phase two of the taxi fare increases he announced last year, on the grounds that it would be inflationary.

What is going on here? Don’t they discuss these matters at Cabinet before they announce them?

Populism and fiscal prudence don’t go well together. This campaign period leading up to the 2024/2025 general election is going to be more than interesting! It’s track season, and time to “run wid it”!

At the Annual Conference of the Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA) this week, the minister of education – maybe in an attempt to downplay the Patterson Report – celebrated what she called 60 years of progress in education since Independence. The Patterson Report recited a litany of what is wrong with Jamaica’s education system. Is there a disconnect? Who is she trying to convince?

She announced “Sixty years ago, if I could cast your minds back, almost half a million adults in Jamaica were illiterate. And then today… the literacy rate of Jamaica overall is 88 per cent. Significantly higher.”

Incredible!

In 2021 – just three years ago – the Patterson report stated “a third of students at the end of primary school could not read, 56 per cent could not write, and 57 per cent could not identify information in a simple sentence” (page 25). Patterson says that in 2021, only 66 per cent of students at the end of primary school were literate, and taking into account the accumulated illiteracy in the older folk over the decades, for Jamaica in 2024 to have an “overall” literacy rate of 88 per cent is, well … miraculous!

CHALLENGING ACCURACY?

Is Minister Williams challenging the accuracy of the Patterson Report? Is this why she has not tabled it in Parliament for debate two years after it was submitted?

Minister Williams went on to tell the JTA, as reported in the press:

“Sixty years ago, only about 40 per cent of the teachers then were trained. Today, we boast 10 teacher training institutions, including those with teacher education faculties. And I would say 100 per cent of our teachers are trained.”

I am willing to bet Minister Williams that no more than 20 per cent of physics, chemistry and biology teachers in Jamaican high schools are trained teachers; they will have university degrees in the sciences, but no teaching qualifications, and are classified as pre-trained (read untrained) graduates.

The claim by Minister Williams that “100 per cent of our teachers are trained” cannot be true.

In her address to the JTA the minister declared: “Today, every child born in Jamaica is guaranteed a space in a high school. The conversation is now which high school, which one.”

Really?

Now the minister was not clear about what she means by “high school”. Is she including all-age schools and junior high schools in her definition? If so, then every child born in Jamaica has been guaranteed a space in a high school since long before independence, and her claim is true but trivial. And if not, then her statement simply is not true.

We now have hundreds of foreign-born athletes being educated in Jamaican high schools at taxpayers’ expense, while hundreds of Jamaican boys and girls cannot get into traditional high schools. On what moral basis are the sons and daughters of Jamaican taxpayers being denied places in taxpayer-funded high schools while the sons and daughters of foreigners, who pay no taxes in Jamaica, are educated at public expense? Is this fiscal responsibility?

Why the reluctance to admit that all is not well with our education sector, and that the JTA – in fact – may be part of the problem? Why the effort to discredit the Patterson Report? It is this kind of pussyfooting around that convinces me that we are not going to see any real improvement in our education system any time soon.

Peter Espeut is a sociologist and development scientist. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com