Opinion · Op-Ed
Research Is Only Half the Job. Parents Also Deserve an Explanation.
The Minister showed his working on why school fees had to go. He now owes parents the same transparency on how their refunds are being calculated. One parent says she paid close to $490 and got $60 back.
When Education Minister Phillip Jackson defended the government’s decision on secondary school fees, he did something ministers too rarely do. He showed his evidence. To the argument that the policy was rushed, he replied, in effect, that the homework had been done, and then he published a spreadsheet setting out what schools across St. Vincent and the Grenadines were charging first form parents for uniforms, books, insurance, PTA dues, laboratory fees, exercise books and much else besides. That was the right thing to do, and he deserves credit for it.
It is worth being precise about what the policy actually is, because the scale is easy to understate. This is not a trim. On 15 July the Ministry announced the removal of registration, processing and admission fees for Form 1 students entering all public and government-assisted secondary schools from September 2026, which the government presents as the delivery of an NDP campaign promise and as a reinforcement of the free tuition guarantee already written into Section 16 of the Education Act. Fees that parents have paid for years are being abolished, not lowered.
For the first time, the public can see how widely the burden varied. On the Minister’s own figures, the mandatory items alone ranged from about EC$80 at the cheaper end to around EC$265 at the higher one, before a single optional item was added. The data confirms what parents have complained about for years. There was little consistency from one school gate to the next. The Minister himself called the old arrangement a mess, and on the evidence he published, that word is fair.
But publishing the research is only half the job.
The parents are asking for arithmetic, not politics
The policy has created a second problem that deserves exactly the same transparency as the first. Parents who paid before the announcement are now asking how their refunds are being worked out, and some of the numbers they are describing do not obviously add up.
Consider one account posted publicly this week by a parent who registered a child for secondary school before the change. By her telling she paid about $340, plus $50 for the book loan scheme, plus something over $100 for insurance. When she went for her refund, she says, she received $60. That is a parent who handed over something close to $490 and got a fraction of it back, and who has been given no breakdown of why.
When I went to get a refund it was only 60.00.
A parent, describing her refund this week
She is not asking for politics. She is asking for arithmetic. And she is not alone. The same social media threads that circulated the Minister’s spreadsheet are now full of parents comparing what they paid with what they were returned, and finding no pattern they can follow.
What transparency on the refund would look like
The remedy is not complicated, and it is the natural completion of the very approach the Minister has already chosen.
Four questions the Ministry can answer now
- What exactly is refundable? The removed fees are registration, processing and admission charges. If uniforms, book loans, insurance or PTA dues were never part of the abolished category, say so plainly, so a parent knows a $60 refund on a $490 payment may be arithmetically correct rather than a shortchange.
- Is there a single formula, or many? If every school is applying its own method, that is the old inconsistency reappearing at the refund stage, and it needs the same correction the fees themselves just received.
- Who holds the money? Historically these fees funded the individual school, not the Ministry. Parents deserve to know whether their refund comes from the school’s account or from central government, and on what timeline.
- What is the deadline? “Exercise patience” is a reasonable request once, but it is not a schedule. A date would end most of the speculation on its own.
None of this is hostile to the policy. Abolishing these fees is, on the evidence, a genuine relief for families, and the government is entitled to the credit. The Minister has also said the state will fund the gap the change leaves in school budgets, which is the responsible other half of the promise. But a good policy can still be undermined by a confusing rollout, and right now the rollout is where the confidence is leaking.
The burden that remains
The spreadsheet makes one more point the government should sit with. Most of what a Vincentian family pays at the start of the school year is not the registration fee at all. It is the uniform, the PE kit, the tie, the laboratory fee, the technology fee, the exercise books, the PTA dues, the optional extras. On the Minister’s own data, the optional items alone reached EC$250 at some schools. Removing one category of charge is real help. It does not, on its own, make the start of term affordable.
That is not a reason to withhold praise for what has been done. It is a reason to be honest that the cost-of-living problem in education is wider than the fee that was abolished, and that families will feel the rest of it in September regardless.
Good policy is not only about the announcement. It is about making sure the public understands how the announcement reaches their own pocket. The Minister has shown the research. The obvious next step is to show the methodology behind the refunds. That single act of transparency would answer the parents’ questions, shrink the speculation, and reinforce the confidence that every family is being treated by the same rule. In public administration, the work is not finished when the decision is explained. It is finished when the numbers are.
About this article and its sourcing. This is a signed opinion column and reflects the view of the writer, not a news report. The policy details are drawn from the Ministry of Education’s announcement of 15 July 2026 as reported by iWitness News, Searchlight, the Jamaica Gleaner and CMC, including the Minister’s “much research and deliberation” and “mess” characterisations and his 22 July commitment that government will fund the resulting budget gap. The fee ranges are read from the comparison spreadsheet published by Minister Phillip Jackson, whose internal totals Vincypowa News checked for consistency. The refund account is from a parent’s public comment on Mr Jackson’s Facebook post and is presented as that parent’s testimony, which this newspaper has not independently verified; she did not identify the school in a way this newspaper can confirm, and none is named here. The Ministry of Education is welcome to a full right of reply, and any refund methodology it provides will be published, at editor@vincypowanews.com.