Defunding UWI hurts primary, secondary education – professor

Any decision by the Government to reallocate funds from the tertiary sector to the primary, secondary and early levels of the education system would have the cumulative effect of depleting resources from the country’s education system overall, Dean of the Humanities and Education Faculty at The University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona Professor Silvia Kouwenberg, has asserted.

“Defunding UWI actually means defunding primary, secondary and early childhood education,” she stated.

Kouwenberg was contributing to a panel discussion that examined The UWI Mona’s role in society, held on the campus yesterday.

She noted that funds which have been allocated to The UWI by the Government have supported and strengthened primary, secondary and early childhood institutions.

“It is our efforts over many years that have built capacity in the Jamaican teachers’ colleges. It is our efforts over many years that have ensured that we no longer have schools populated by pre-trained teachers, but that they are now populated by teachers with UWI B.Ed degrees,” she said.

“At the early childhood levels, it is The UWI working very much behind the scenes for very good reasons out of the limelight, but it is The UWI which has worked to infuse academic insight into the treatment of the long-neglected early childhood sector, which has been dominated by small private initiatives by untrained persons and we’ve been working to change that,” she continued.

Kouwenberg stated that The UWI’s School of Education has delivered educational management and leadership training to principals and aspiring principals across the region. She noted too that The UWI performs quality assurance processes to ensure the curricula delivered in teachers’ colleges are informed by current scholarship and pedagogy.

Last July, Finance Minister Dr Nigel Clarke stated that data suggests the Government is underspending at the pre-primary level, while overspending at the tertiary level.

At The UWI, which is funded by regional governments, the originally agreed principle was that the governments would cover 80 per cent of the cost of running the institution – or at rates that merely kept pace with inflation. However, at least in Jamaica’s case, the Government, each fiscal year, allocates to The UWI a dollar amount that does not necessarily equate to a specific funding formula, but what the administration believes it can afford.

According to Clarke, the returns on education from the tertiary level are “mostly private” while, in contrast, the returns at the pre-primary level are public “because the society benefits from most people having a basic level education”.

Clarke’s statement once again fuelled calls for a rebalance of Government spending on education in favour of primary, secondary and early childhood.

However, noting that a funding model has not yet been settled, panellist Dr Dameon Black, executive director of the Jamaica Tertiary Education Commission and chairman of the Education Transformation Commission, said a policy to address higher education in Jamaica is being developed and will encompass issues dealing with governance and innovation. But he noted that the matter of funding has been the “bugbear”.

“They want to ensure that institutions don’t suffer in terms of what they’re getting presently, but that we want to see the extent to which we might be able to implement other things that might be able to generate more resources like performance-based funding,” he said.

Additionally, Black shared the Government’s concerns about the number of institutions offering the same programmes, which he said is “holding up the matter of settling funding”.

However, Professor Trevor Munroe, founding director of National Integrity Action, who delivered the keynote address at the function, believes stakeholders should revisit previous funding models that were established and modify them as they deem necessary for today’s context.

“We need not to seek to reinvent the wheel. Many alternative funding models have been put forward, not least of all by the West Indies Group of University Teachers. What we have not done is develop, upgrade, modernise our thinking in that regard,” he said, adding that efforts should be made to ensure it is an open process.

Munroe in the meantime also urged The UWI to develop a comprehensive marketing programme to showcase its policy, relevant and applied research, and to take advantage of consultancy opportunities in government, as well as develop greater collaboration with private sector and other universities as a means of expanding its funding opportunities.

“Is there not a need for more collaboration, for more partnership, for more collective determination of specialisation to maximise the impact of a considered division of labour?” he asked.

sashana.small@gleanerjm.com