St James East Central teachers offered J$3M in study grants as Bartlett marks three decades of backing schools

Thirty years into his work backing learning in St James East Central, the constituency’s Member of Parliament, Edmund Bartlett, has lined up three million dollars so 30 teachers can keep upgrading their qualifications.

He outlined the commitment on Wednesday at his yearly Teachers’ Day meal for school staff, hosted at the Montego Bay Convention Centre. Addressing guests, the seasoned representative said classroom professionals would be vital as Jamaica pieces itself together after Hurricane Melissa and presses for wider, enduring change across society.

Under the arrangement, every teacher picked will receive one hundred thousand Jamaican dollars to fund specialist coursework at any university or college on the island.

Bartlett, who serves as tourism minister, told the room that teachers are “the technology that transforms children into nations,” and stressed that they still anchor the nation’s advancement.

“There could be no preacher without a teacher. There will be no politician without a teacher. There could be no engineer without a teacher,” he said.

He accepted that pay and workplace conditions remain sore points for many in the field, yet maintained that educators are already guiding the country’s future in the face of those strains.

“We know that we can’t pay you as you deserve,” he said. “So what we say to you is that while the money is growing, not growing as fast as it probably should, the blessings are also flowing.”

Turning to the COVID-19 crisis, he credited teachers with standing among the country’s authentic front-line responders during the emergency.

“We saw how you were the first real first respondent in COVID,” Bartlett said, citing cases in which educators went into neighbourhoods to teach students who had neither internet service nor regular electricity.

He compared that chapter with today’s effort to rebound from Melissa, saying instructors would again be called on to shepherd young people through a tough stretch of reconstruction and sober national reflection.

“We have to build forward. We have to build better. We have to be more resilient,” he said.

He further raised alarm about violence and a slide in everyday civility, arguing that schools must help reset public attitudes and reinforce communal stability.

“One of the things we have to reimagine is the culture of our country,” he said, stating that some Jamaicans were increasingly “crass and crude, uncaring and disrespectful of others.”

He also gave an assurance that every school in the constituency struck by Melissa would be restored and lifted beyond its pre-storm condition.

“All the schools will be fully refurbished and put back in a condition better than it was before,” Bartlett pledged.