“The Schools Do Not Belong to the Government”: A Catholic Deacon Warns Churches to Guard the Schools They Own

• Education Minister Ruel Reid warned he could take over schools that breached funding policy
• Columnist and Catholic deacon Peter Espeut said churches and trusts, not the State, own many top schools
• He traced the church-state partnership back to the 1943 Kandel Committee Report
• He urged church owners to revisit the terms on which they partner with Government

In July 2016, a warning from Jamaica’s education minister prompted a pointed response from one of the Gleaner’s best-known faith voices. Minister Ruel Reid had posted on Facebook that he would be taking “drastic sanctions against School Boards” that did not comply with new government-funding policy, and said the ministry reserved the right to take over schools that continued to breach it. Peter Espeut, a sociologist and Roman Catholic deacon, answered in a column titled “Expropriating church schools”.

Espeut’s core point was about ownership. Jamaican governments, he argued, built few top-quality high schools; most were built and run by churches and trusts. Under the arrangement that followed the 1943 Kandel Committee Report, he wrote, “The churches and trusts would continue to own and operate their schools, but would cede some of their power over their schools to the Government.” The State paid grants-in-aid and could place worthy students in existing schools without spending hundreds of millions of dollars building new ones, while the churches kept their property and religious character. He called it a win for both sides.

That partnership, he argued, was fraying as grants fell short and demands for control grew. He rejected a directive suggesting that money raised in a school’s name belonged to Government. “The schools do not belong to the Government, and the ‘name of the school’ inheres in the church or trust and not the Government,” he wrote.

Espeut drew on memory to make his case. In 1976 he had visited St Stanislaus College and St Rose’s High School in Guyana, church schools later expropriated by the Forbes Burnham government, a move he linked to years of church-state conflict. He warned that the Education Act of 1965 contained mechanisms that could allow a takeover in Jamaica and closed with a call to action: “I invite the churches and trusts that own and operate schools to revisit the arrangements under which they partner with the Government.”

Behind the education debate sits one of the largest pools of church-held property in Jamaica: school land and buildings owned by denominations and trusts across every parish. For churches, the column is a reminder that ownership is only as secure as the paperwork and agreements behind it, from titles and trust deeds to the terms of any government partnership. For past students in the diaspora who give back to their alma maters, it is also worth knowing who actually owns the school they are funding, and how that money is held.

Follow Jamaica Homes on Youtube @jamaicahomes and Instagram @jamaica_homes and on Facebook @jamaicahomesnews Send us a message or email us at onlinefeedback@jamaica-homes.com or editor@jamaica-homes.com