PM announces $100 primary school book grant

Parents and guardians of public primary school students will be eligible for a $100 grant from Government for books purchased for the upcoming school year.

Prime Minister Mia Mottley made the announcement on Friday, as she noted that the much talked about and anticipated education reform of the educational system would start soon, with the conversion of the secondary textbook loan scheme into a digital one.

She told a gathering at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre for the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean (CAF) presentation of its report on economic development, Inherent Inequalities, that starting from around her generation, people have been privileged to go through secondary school and have access to a textbook loan scheme for a fee, making it easier for parents who were struggling financially.

She said while the Government was not in a position to do all it wanted “in one fell swoop”, her administration would ensure that “we can go there in two or three steps”.

“The ultimate step is for us to convert the secondary textbook loan scheme into a digital loan scheme, a digital access for these textbooks at the secondary level,” said Mottley.

“But also at the primary level we are not yet fully there and while the Ministry does its work to carry us there, I’m asking therefore, and have asked the Minister and Ministry of Finance for us to make available with immediate effect from this financial year and this academic year, a grant of $100 per student for the primary school for each parent for each primary school child who has to buy books to participate in the primary school system.”

Indicating that the purchase of books could easily cost parents of primary school children as much as $250 or more per student, Mottley acknowledged that the $100 Primary School Book Grant was a small contribution to efforts to create a more equitable educational system.

Mottley said parents and guardians should purchase the books and then submit their claims. However, she asked that they be patient.

“What is anticipated is that parents will produce their receipts to the schools and once they produce the receipts and the money is in excess of the $100, the school will certify and make the arrangements…. We will need about four weeks to be able to manage it in order to ensure that those students’ parents or guardians be the recipients of that hundred-dollar scheme,” she explained.

“This goes to further reducing inherited inequalities, because if you can’t get out of primary school learning you’re not going to learn at secondary school, you’re not going to get that opportunity easily to go into post-secondary institutions and, therefore, when we say that we are trying to battle the inequalities one by one by one, these are the examples of it that we are showing.”

With Government currently undertaking research on how best to reform the education system, Mottley said the reform proposals would be placed on the table “very shortly”.

“The Ministry of Education has been spending the last year in deep consultation at the level of all stakeholders – from the unions to the principals to the teachers, to the students, to the rest of the society in terms of employers and civil society – recognising that what we are doing is a once in 50 or 60-year exercise that is necessary to be able to finetune so that those people who are now falling through the cracks will be able to be captured,” she said.

(MM)