Private school employees could soon receive financial grant funds

WESTERN BUREAU:

Dr. Kasan Troupe, the acting chief executive officer in the Ministry of Education, says that an application has been submitted to the Ministry of Finance for private school employees who have not yet received the one-time financial grant.

Troupe was speaking at the Jamaica Independent Schools Association’s (JISA) first annual Parents and Guardians National Conference.

“While the call was made for the one-off grant, it has not worked out as smoothly as we anticipated because of some challenges with submission of information. We have already put it together, under the directive of our minister [Education Minister Fayval Williams], that an appeal is to be submitted to the Ministry of Finance to make sure that persons who did not benefit and who would have qualified for it can be looked at, to see if the allowance can be paid,” Troupe said.

“We look forward to a favourable response to share with you in very short order. We may not be able to give you everything and say yes to everything, but we do empathise with you, and we will try our very best to change whatever we can internally to support you going forward,” Troupe added.

LONG-STANDING ISSUE

The payment of the one-time grant has been a long-standing issue for private schools since it was announced by the Ministry of Education in September 2020. Under the terms of the grant, private school teachers are to get a one-off payment of J$40,000 each, while J$10,000 would be paid to each support staff member.

However, a recent survey conducted among the 150 private schools represented by JISA revealed that, of the 58 schools which responded, only six schools confirmed that their employees received the grant.

Troupe informed that all digital materials have been made available for all schools through the ministry’s app.

“As a ministry, each year we are given a budget for the provision of textbooks to schools under our textbook programme, for our primary and secondary public schools. Because of the nature of the relationship that we have with our private institutions, and because of the Education Act, the provisions would not have been made in our budget for private schools to be given the same kind of support,” said Troupe.

“Nonetheless, where we procured or created access for e-materials or digital materials, we shared that with all our schools, both public and private. All those resources on the Ministry of Education app would have been made available to our private institutions,” Troupe said.