Eaton McNamee has made a name for himself in the world of education. Starting out as a members of the teaching profession continue to underscore the importance of strong representation on their behalf, principal of the Broadleaf Primary and Infant School in Manchester and candidate in the Jamaica Teacher’s Association (JTA) 2021-2022 presidential race, Eaton McNamee, is of the view that the education ministry has lost touch with those crucial to its functioning.
He recently quoted that “We have not yet developed the political will to put into education what is necessary. We have to start at the early childhood level. It cannot be that at the early childhood level we suffer, at the primary level we get a little money and then at the high school level you want to compensate for what was lacking at the previous levels.” He went to clarify that the education sector has not been operating in accordance to those facing the ongoing pandemic – “COVID-response teaching is what we applied because we have not yet mastered online teaching and we are nowhere there. The meagre request we have made is to be given the tools to work with. You cannot send us home in the online environment with absolutely nothing to work with. My research tells me that only approximately 10 per cent of teachers have gotten laptops from their schools.”
There are several reports done annually for the budgets of the education sector. It was according to the Presidential Aspirant task force report that it was shown that although the required budget was 250 Million the education sector got less than half of that amount. McNamee went on to quote that “This is 2021 and it is $117 billion dollars allocated, so you see the disparity. We are nowhere where we ought to be and we can understand the impact of COVID-19, but it’s time we put a team together to see how we spread that money across the sector. It can’t be business as usual, we are now in the digital era, we will never get back to pre-COVID stage, so we have to think with the realities of what we are faced with.”
