THE MORE the parents/guardians pay for the education of their children, the stronger is their incentive to ensure that their children make good on the educational opportunity.

While increasing the incentive for parents/guardians to monitor children's education is good, increasing the price of education to the family increases the number of children participating but at the same time it lowers the family's participation in the educational process, which is vital.

Here we have a dilemma, the instrument (price), which causes better utilisation of the educational opportunity also simultaneously, reduces the access of some. Two desirable inputs move in opposite directions in response to the same instrument. The optimal solution cannot be what economists call a corner solution i.e. where one of the considerations is given no weight while the other is the only one taken into account.

The optimal solution would be for each family to pay the maximum amount that it could afford and for the Government to pay the difference. Since it is impossible to truly discover this maximum that each family can pay, the second best solution is for the Government to pay the same portion of the school fees for all students in the first instance and for parents/guardians to be asked to pay the remainder. Those parents/ guardians who cannot pay their contributions can be further assisted by the Government.

FREE-RIDER PROBLEM

Of course, there is a strong incentive for parents who can afford to pay to claim that they cannot, since they know that no child will be denied access because of non-payment. This is what is known as the free-rider problem. Targeting, by way of some sort of means test, is necessary to prevent excessive leakage from the Government's purse through this free-rider problem.

This incidentally, is the system that is currently in place. The "no child will be denied because of non-payment" clause leaves the system open to abuse. The social consensus may very well be that the Government, acting as agent for the taxpayers, would rather absorb the losses from this type of abuse than have any child denied access.

What is required is further refinement of the targeting mechanism that would elicit appropriate contributions from parents/guardians who can truly afford to pay. A sharpening of the instrument, rather than a blunting of the instrument is needed.

The free education proposal would give parents/guardians more without ensuring that increase will be spent on education and cost the taxpayers more without increasing the total amount spent on education. The free education proposal is a bad idea.

Let us return to the question of financing the free education. Rather than raising taxes the Government could seek to float bonds to finance free education i.e. it could borrow more money to pay for the free education. But, just as increasing taxes to pay for free education was, in effect, a transfer of income; government borrowing to pay for free education would be tantamount to a transfer of income from future generation to the present generation.

The size of the Government's debt service obligation would increase. Given the size of the current debt-service and the fact that this obligation cannot be paid off by the current generation, we need to ask whether a policy that would saddle the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the current generation with a larger debt burden is wise and, moreover, fair.

Many voices are now championing the move by Prime Minister Manley in 1973 when he announced free education without knowing how it was to be financed. In 1973 the country was in its eleventh year of Independence and still in its infancy as an independent nation.

Back then such less than prudent approaches to public finances could be attributed to youthful exuberance of a newly-formed nation. Jamaica is now 40 years old as an independent country and cannot and must not pursue its economic and social agenda with such recklessness.

Some have argued that Jamaica had to abandon free education because of structural adjustment and, now that the country is no longer under structural adjustment, it should return to it. This is a flawed argument. Good policy is good policy, and bad policy is bad policy, regardless of how and where it originates.

Why was structural adjustment necessary in the first place? Because the existing set of policies were unsustainable. Free education was abandoned in the past because it was not sustainable. What has the country learned over the past 25 to 30 years?

It is good that education is on the political agenda. Because quality education is so important to a country's economic and social development, it is doubly sad that the current debate is taking the public's focus away from more serious and relevant issues: quality of output, quality of teachers, amount of non-teaching resources available, incentives for teachers to do a good job when the system has the appropriate quality teachers, class size, etc.

THE DEBATE IS A DISTRANCTION

These are the issues that should be discussed, not only for the secondary level but all levels, including the tertiary level. The debate over free education is a distraction from these pressing real issues.

In democratic societies people have a right to choose. People also have a right to make the wrong decisions. Bad decisions are however punished without any consideration as to whether they were democratically arrived at or not. Bad policy leads to slower economic growth and a less functional society.

It is unfortunate that both political leaders have fallen into a populist mode, where the heart rather than the head is used in forming this proposed policy. Good policies require the use of the head, gently guided by the heart. Good policy is never made using the heart alone.

It is sincerely hoped that after the election, whoever wins will step back from the precipice and move towards sound judgment. Not to do so will cost the country dearly in years to come, even after bad policy is reversed.

Free Education, as currently proposed, is a policy from the heart and not the head. It is a bad idea with possibly far ranging negative consequences for Jamaica and Jamaica's children. Free education is, in this case, a bad idea.