The Education Transformation Oversight Committee (ETOC) is recommending that the Government leverage private capital to rebuild eight schools that were destroyed by Hurricane Melissa in October 2025.
Addressing Thursday’s (March 26) ETOC press conference at Shortwood Teachers’ College in St. Andrew, Chairman, Dr. Adrian Stokes, noted that Hurricane Melissa, a Category-Five system, dealt Jamaica a severe blow.
He added that the education sector was among the hardest hit, with more than 600 schools suffering damage at varying levels.
“Every crisis presents an opportunity to emerge stronger and more resilient to future shocks. The damage to our schools is an opportunity to rebuild modern, fit-for-purpose learning environments that can withstand severe weather systems,” the Chairman said.
Dr. Stokes emphasised that the Government should take strategic decisions to secure adequate funding, ensuring reconstruction is carried out at the scale and speed demanded by the disaster.
He argued that the national Budget cannot accommodate the scale of financial resources required for rebuilding.
Dr. Stokes noted, however, that this need not be a binding constraint, provided the Government enacts measures to attract private capital as part of its broader capital mobilisation strategy.
“For every school built by the Government, the State should seek to sell that school to pension funds and other long-term investors and enter, simultaneously, into long-term contracts with those same investors. Alternatively, pension funds can build the schools and lease these back to Government on a long-term basis,” he outlined.
The ETOC Chair clarified that selling a school to Jamaican pension funds and leasing it back to the Ministry of Education, Skills, Youth and Information does not constitute privatisation.
“It is what we would call mobilisation. The State retains control, students keep their classrooms, pension savers gain stable, long-duration returns and, importantly, the Government converts $190 billion in deficit pressure into fiscal space without mortgaging Jamaica’s future to foreign creditors,” Dr. Stokes stated.
He added that the hurricane was unprecedented and that the Government’s budgetary response has been bold.
“What remains is execution – at the speed [demanded by] 689 damaged schools – and a nation in recovery,” Dr. Stokes said.
