WESTERN BUREAU:

Minister of Education, Maxine Henry-Wilson has called on the private sector to assist in the creation of more space in the school system, if Government is to phase out the shift system.

"We have done some estimates of what we are going to need to take our children off the shift system, and be consistent with what are the international requirement for the learning space for each child," she said. "We are going to need about 400,000 school spaces, not next year or the year after - we need them now."

Minister Henry-Wilson, who was speaking at the launch of The Palmyra Foundation in Montego Bay on Tuesday, said while there had been a history of private of public partnership in the educational sector, there was an urgent need for the rejuvenation of those ties.

She suggested that the private sector adopt sections of the British model, which sees entities providing school spaces, leasing them to the Government and running the facility on the Government's behalf.

"When they looked at the results of this private/public initiative between the Government and the private sector, 40 per cent of the schools said that they were able to benefit from private sector knowledge of how to run the facility," added the minister.

"Another 32 per cent felt that (they benefited from) the availability of in-house expertise in maintaining plants and establishing maintenance programmes (and experienced a) higher quality of service because (teachers and principals) were not concentrating on administration and other matters."

Making her contribution to the 2007/2008 Sectoral Debate in the House of Representatives earlier, Mrs. Henry-Wilson announced that 11 schools would be removed from the shift system come September.

In addition, more than 100 schools that were classified as primary and junior high schools will be reclassified as primaryschools, with the junior high sections removed.