National Education Trust to be Established

A National Education Trust is to be established to fund the construction and maintenance of the country’s education infrastructure. Addressing yesterday’s (September 27) JIS ‘Think Tank’ at 58A Half- Way-Tree Road, Minister of Education, Andrew Holness explained that the Trust would be incorporated in the current education transformation system that exists.
“We have to get the Trust worked into the existing framework of transformation, because the current framework did not contemplate the establishment of the Trust, but that can be easily fitted in,” he assured.
In addition to becoming the body that will see to the construction and major maintenance of the education infrastructure, Minister Holness said that the Education Trust would also have a fund-raising component and would focus on Jamaicans in the Diaspora as well.
“We want it to become an institution that can accommodate a great deal of charity and voluntarism that exist in Jamaica towards education, but which does not have the framework to capitalize on,” he outlined.
The Trust, he added, would be built in a similar manner to the National Housing Trust and “we hope that it will have a dedicated stream of income probable coming from discussions out of the consolidation of social taxes.”
“In many respects, this will take care of us having to deal with the issue of space. It will also address the issue of quality; because, clearly the quality of the infrastructure has a lot to do with the quality of the output,” the Minister reasoned. “You will have the National Education Trust developing a Trust Fund hopefully with billions of dollars that it can earn from its endowment, its stream as well as its fund-raising activities. So, we will not have to worry that a school is needed here or furniture is needed there,” he pointed out.