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alexk
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Principals of private secondary schools have met their commitment and have supplied Finance Minister Colm Imbert with documentary evidence of the cost of running their schools including “private information with respect to the private students intake and how much the private parents pay.”
Spokesman for the Association of Private Secondary Schools Anthony Mc Collin, acting vice principal of the Corpus Christi College, told the T&T Guardian that the information was sent to Imbert via email on Sunday and “I personally dropped a hard copy off to the Ministry of Finance this morning (yesterday).”
The request for the document with the breakdown of how the association arrived at $5700 and the additional information was requested by Imbert at a meeting last Thursday with the association.
Imbert was accompanied to that meeting by Education Minister Anthony Garcia and Agriculture Minister Clarence Rambharat.
Another meeting is scheduled for this Friday, but Imbert told the principals that Garcia will not be present at this week’s talks since he is proceeding on vacation, “but that’s okay,” Imbert is reported to have said.
Yesterday, Mc Collin said, “Garcia’s presence or absence is of no real concern to me at this point in time.”
According to Mc Collin, Imbert indicated that “he has been given the mandate to settle this issue as quickly and efficiently as possible, so I take it that since the Minister of Education should have had to brief Mr Imbert on what our discussions would have been prior to his intervention and since it is in the hands of this committee which would have been set up by the Prime Minister, Garcia’s absence is therefore not significant.”
Mc Collin said principals are “just going to wait and see what happens.”
He said they have had the discussions “back and forth,” and the principals have submitted all information required. “I think hope for me is something dried up at this stage, I just continue to wait and see what happens,” he said.
Private schools have warned they may be forced to close their doors if the issue of the fee increase is not settled.
Mc Collin explained that when the arrangement started in the late 1990’s it was on the basis of the schools taking in 14- plus students.
The majority of students at that time were private, which left the schools room to negotiate with private parents to increase fees.
Even though the fee paid by the Government at that time was “not adequate,” Mc Collin said the difference was made up by the school’s ability to enrol more private students.
Today more than 90 per cent of the student population at private secondary schools are placed there by the Government.
Because the Government pays $1,200, Mc Collin said the schools can no longer negotiate with private parents who are clamouring against the fees they currently pay, “because they are saying why must we pay such a substantial amount when there are children sitting in the same classroom with the private students who are getting the same opportunities for education at much less. So clearly that has put us in a difficult situation.”
Mc Collin said in some cases private students pay four times what the Government is paying per child per term. The figures have been given to the Finance Minister as requested.
Mc Collin made it clear that contrary to what the Government may think “we are not trying to dig out anybody’s eyes, but the reality is that we have been under paid since the contract started with $750 which was never the cost to educate a child.
Mc Collin said it was unfair “the school compounds are being used without a rent being paid and the Government pays for nothing.”
The private schools through the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Ssventh Day Adventist Boards pay for the upkeep of the schools, all the material the students need and security. Annually, he said the schools are millions of dollars in the red because they virtually subsidise the cost of education for the government students.
Mc Collin said up to yesterday payments for the last school term were still outstanding, and with their July pay date of July 28 approaching they are hoping that they will get the outstanding payment owed to them by the end of this week.