Daraine Luton, Sunday Gleaner Reporter

Monteith

OPPOSITION spokesman on education, Andrew Holness, says a Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) government would widen the tax base in order to gain additional funding for its proposed tuition-free education.

However, State Minister for Education, Senator Noel Monteith, has described the promise of free education as empty, claiming it would mean additional taxation.

Mr. Holness carefully points out that this widening of the tax base does not mean increase in taxes, which he admits would have to take place in the long run. A widening of the tax base means bringing as many people as possible into the tax net so as to increase tax revenue.

"We are going to restructure the budget to give education more," Mr. Holness told The Sunday Gleaner.

The current education budget is $35.1 billion, or 11.2 per cent of total national expenditure budgeted for the financial year 2006-2007.

Increase education spending

Mr. Holness says a JLP administration would increase spending on education to 15 per cent of the national budget, which would not include money (approximately $22 billion) needed for capital expenditure yearly.

But says Senator Monteith: "The JLP are talking just because they are in Opposition and they are doing this without any true assessment of the true cost and without knowing what funds will be available to them."

"When you make a promise based on such emptiness you must be playing politics," he adds.

Under the JLP's plan, all students to the secondary-school level will have tuition-free education. This will eliminate the current cost-sharing system which came into being in 1986 during the Edward Seaga regime.

Promised abolition

Prior to Mr. Seaga's implementing cost-sharing, the People's National Party's (PNP) regime, led by the late Michael Manley, had a system of free education to the tertiary level. Both the JLP and the PNP promised tuition-free education in the run-up to the 2002 General Election with former Prime Minister P.J. Patterson promising an abolition of tuition fees by 2005. The PNP has since said they will not be able to honour that commitment.

"If were in a position to offer free education, this Government would not hesitate to do so," Senator Monteith said.

For this academic year, Senator Monteith says approximately $1.2 billion is being spent on the cost-sharing programme.

While Mr. Holness estimates that it would require between $600 million to $1 billion more from the Government's coffers to abolish tuition fees in secondary schools, Senator Monteith says this figure cannot be properly estimated as no study has been done to determine the economic cost of sending a child to secondary school per year.

The Survey of Living Conditions (2005), published by the Planning Institute of Jamaica, estimates that parents spend approximately $19.2 billion per year on education.