Prime Minister Holness Speaks to 7th Graders at Jamaica College
The Most Honourable Andrew Holness ON, PC, MP
Prime Minister of Jamaica
Address to 1st Form Students
At
Jamaica College
On
September 3, 2024
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For the next 10 minutes, I will take the mantle of principal.
Let me acknowledge the Chairman and the Board of Jamaica College. I am supported here today by Minister Vaz and Minister Williams and indeed, my presence here was meant to be a surprise and I’m happy to say that we did surprise you. It’s a good surprise.
Now, it was not so long ago that I too was making preparations with my mother to go back to school and as I stood this morning at the transportation centre in Half Way Tree observing parents moving about with their children, and just looking at their faces, I could tell there is a sense of pride; my child is going to school, he’s going to a school that I wanted him to go to or she’s going to her first day in primary school but I could also see that sense of lingering concern.
The challenge is to get our children back to school. For some, it’s the cost of the uniform and books. For others, it’s the difficulty in getting from home to school, the distance and the unreliable and expensive public transportation. For others, it is the worry about the security of my child that I’m going to essentially leave up in the public space to be able to navigate and to get to school safely and on time. And for others, it is the worry that will my child do well in school? Will the school have the furniture, the teachers? And for others, it is the worry about other children, who will my child be interfacing with and interacting in school? Will the school experience uplift my child, or will it destroy the values that I’ve worked so hard to instil at home? All these are concerns as we go back to school, this very important societal ritual of bringing the nation under the umbrella of education.
As prime minister, my job is to ensure that all your concerns are addressed, that the government is working in an instrumental way to address all of these challenges in meaningful ways. Before the government can do anything else, we must fix our economy. This school, it’s probably over 200 years old, I’m told. We are benefiting from an institution which was built by other generations before, and we continue to benefit from it; that is the ultimate definition of an investment. The government has to continue to invest in education. And how do we do that?
Well, this process of investment can only be supported when we have a strong robust economy. And a part of that strong robust economy is how the government manages your funds as taxpayers. And I don’t believe there is anyone who could genuinely level a criticism at the government about how we have managed your resources from a fiscal perspective. We have managed public expenditure. We have managed public revenues in such a way as to deliver the services that you need and make the investments without borrowing more than we need to, as Minister Vas pointed out, but more importantly, without placing any additional taxes on you. That’s a fundamental shift. Indeed, a profound improvement in how your financial affairs were handled before.
We are now at a point where we can’t abandon the fiscal discipline that has gotten us to here, but we are now at a point where we have to give greater focus to make the investments in the things that matter to you now and for the future. We have to make greater investment in our human resource development. Let’s put that another way, we need to make greater investment in education and training, but we also have to start to make investments in improving your quality of life. Let me put that another way. We must now focus on addressing the pain points that you, as parents and students, experience in your everyday life. One area that the government will be focusing on heavily is on reducing the cost of living. Yes, we have to focus on the cost of living.
Now, when we talk about cost of living, some persons may immediately say inflation, prices are moving too fast. Yes, inflation is an issue, but inflation is not the same as the cost of living. Inflation is a part of the cost of living but one area, for example, of cost of living that affects you the parents who are gathered here today, is the cost of public transportation. And not just the cost of public transportation, the quality of public transportation, the reliability, the cleanliness, the availability of seats, the maintenance of a schedule; all of those things affect the cost that you pay for public transportation.
As I spoke with your principal and board chairman, he was pointing out to me that one of the great concerns the board had was would there be enough buses to take students to school? And as I spoke to a mother on the bus on which I rode this morning, she pointed out to me that when she can’t get the public transportation, she has to pay a taxi. And when she paid $150, the taxi man told her that no, he wants $200, and she must come out of his taxi. That’s a pain point for you, the parents. Happily, today she was able to get on the bus so when I asked her, so how much you’re paying on the bus now- her daughter is four years old, first day at school- and she said, my daughter pays nothing.
You see the impact of having more buses and the cost to her. And it is things like this that the government is focusing on, getting more buses in the public transportation system. With this structure of persons who can’t pay, persons who we need to target for support with subsidies like students going to school, the elderly, this is a way in which we reduce the cost to you, the parents but if we can do it in a way as well where the buses run on time, where the buses are clean, where the buses are safe. By the way, there are 13 cameras on each of these new buses so we can definitely monitor what is happening in the buses. The buses are geotracked and they will be connected to an app so you can look on your app when it is lodged, and you will see where the bus is, and you will be able to position yourself to get that bus.
So, we are really trying to improve the quality of the service and that will be a tangible way in which the government would take the benefits of the good fiscal management of the economy and translate it into tangible benefits that improve your quality of life, improve the service that you get, reduce the pain point of public transportation, and reduce the cost of living to you. There are many other programmes like this that the government is working on but today, as you go back to school as parents, you have to contend with the cost of education, the cost of public transport, worrying about security; I want you to be aware of the changes and the investments that the government is making in improving the quality of your life.
As I wrap up, let me congratulate all the young men here who have done very well in their PEP examinations and have earned a place in the future in one of the most prestigious high schools in Jamaica. The congratulations are equally deserving to the parents because it is as if you sat the exams and while we celebrate this, I want you to for a moment detach yourself from the personal success and your sense of achievement and look at the bigger picture of Jamaica’s education system.
Essentially, the education system at an early stage in the life cycle of our children would have allocated life chances by virtue of their performance on an exit exam. At some point, the nation has to ask itself, is this the fairest way of distributing quality education space because essentially, what we do is to create a two-tiered education system. If we really want to change the way, this cannot be the way in which we move forward in the future. So, another area of investment that the government will have to make is in a radical transformation of the education system. I’m not going to go into too much detail today, I promise not to take up too much of your time, but I want to reinforce that Jamaica’s future, its economy has always been and will continue to be, but even more so dependent on the quality of human resources that we produce.
As we approach full employment, we’re moving from 13% and 14% and 15% unemployment down to now 5% unemployment, the marginal quality of skills that is being made available to the market becomes even more important for the expansion of business. And what we need to be providing to the market from the education system are students that are trained in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. As parents, please do not place in the minds of the students a psychological fear of mathematics or anything technical. Encourage them, even if you are not mathematically inclined, encourage them. It is the way of the world. If Jamaica is to move from a low wage, low productivity, low growth economy into a high wage, high growth, high productivity economy, investing in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics is critical. Encourage your Children in that path. Not to the exclusion of their natural creativity in other areas, but it is important that they are able to negotiate the world in which they will live.
Essentially, parents, the world that we will inhabit, will be led by people who create technology and innovate and those who consume it. It is those who create it, who create the value that will have the wealth and those who are constantly consuming it, you will be one step just above poverty.
If you want your household, your country to raise its level of production to break the cycle of poverty then we must become the creators of technology and to become the creators of technology your children must embrace science, technology, engineering and mathematics. We are investing, we have said we’re going to be building six new STEM schools. Those schools will not be operated under the Education Act as it presently is. We will develop a new scheme of management because this is a national priority for our development. We must be generating every year to our market, to our industries, the skills needed to take up the jobs that will come in the next 20 and 30 years.
I wanted to leave you with those sobering thoughts but again, as I close to return you to a happier thought, enjoy the success that you have. Embrace the challenges that will come. Hardships they are, but the land is green, and the sun is shining. Make the most of it. Our schools will go on.
God bless you and thank you.