A STORY IN yesterday's Gleaner reported that the Ministry of Education is trying to recover money it overpaid to several schools under its cost sharing programme.
The overpayment reportedly occurred over a three year period and could force the closure of several schools for the rest of the year.
One of the schools affected, Seaforth High, is owed $3 million in outstanding school fees and the ministry is to pay over $26 million. However, if the Ministry deducts the sum owed, the school will only have $100,000 to operate on for the rest of the school year.
This issue is certainly cause for concern. In fact, this is the second time the ministry has overpaid money and sought to get it back. Last year it wrote off $20 million which it overpaid to 80 specialist teachers.
It is obvious that the issue of educating our society is not treated with importance as the relevant personnel do not make enough effort to track the spending of the money it is allocated.
The sector is already under funded and one would expect the Government to carefully monitor the spending of the little that it has.
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