JTA decries measly funding of early childhood sector as wicked, unreasonable

Western Bureau:

The Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA) has described as wicked and uncaring, the measly financial resources being spent by the Government to facilitate the development of the nation’s children.

JTA Secretary General Mark Nicely made that observation during an address at the inaugural staging of the JTA’s Early Childhood Education Conference at the Holiday Inn Resort in Montego Bay yesterday.

“It is wicked, dreadful and unreasonable what we are doing with the early childhood sector, the children and the practitioners involved,” Nicely said while urging the Government to be true to its conference theme of ‘Right start, prioritising early childhood education’.

There are more than 2,300 private and public early childhood institutions in the sector, catering to 107,000 children islandwide, to whom Nicely said their future is being stifled because, instead of providing the resources required, there has been a plethora of lip service being bandied about the importance of the sector.

According to him, the cliché that the early childhood sector is the foundation of the education system is simply that, a cliché, one that we have all been practising in terms of our verbalising it.

Nicely said he does not share the belief that, as a country, we have taken adequate steps to operationalise and ensure that early childhood education becomes the foundation on which the entire education system is built.

He also revealed that persons who currently operate in the sector and are funded through the Early Childhood Commission received a maximum monthly salary of just under $30,000, many of whom are being considered unqualified despite the work they do in caring for the nation’s children at a tender age, and most voluntary stage of their lives.

This, he said, needs to be adjusted upward and in a significant and meaningful amount to ensure that these critical practitioners can live a decent life from their wages and can at some.point afford the benefits of owning their own house.

Sonia Stewart, acting communications manager at the Early Childhood Commission (ECC), an agency of the Ministry of Education and Youth, who brought greetings at the opening session of the three-day conference, said the education ministry is treating the early childhood sector as one of its main areas of priority.

In trumpeting the government investment in the sector, Stewart said 14 per cent of the annual budget, which is equivalent to $11 billion, is allocated to early childhood education and special education.

‘Strengthen the Foundation’

“[It is] a clear commitment to strengthening the foundation of the education system,” Stewart told early practitioners in attendance at the JTA’s Early Childhood Education Conference.

She noted that, from the ministry’s perspective, a strong education sector, operating with established standards, is fundamental to the development of the nation and its people.

Nicely, however, countered, arguing that the country is suffering because the early childhood sector is not adequately provided with the resources needed to foster its transformation as the foundation for better outcomes in developing its people.

“I heard what the ministry has said and what it has done, and what it is doing, and perhaps what it plans to do in the future, but I would have to say with all due respect, that is not enough,” Nicely said.

“I am using this platform, this opportunity, to say to Jamaica, let us stop putting lip service to early childhood education. We have gone on far, far too long. We have been hypocritical,” the JTA secretary general pleaded.

Continuing, Nicely reasoned that he still has clear memories of his days in early childhood education.

“It is where many of us, our biological systems fell apart, and we had to be cleaned up, that is where it happened, that is where the busy parents let off the child and never picked them up until late in those formative years,” he explained.

albert.ferguson@gleanerjm.com