Optimizing the Jamaican tourist industry for educational purposes

Optimizing the Jamaican tourist industry for educational purposes

Prof. Emeritus Franklin Knight, Ph.D.

(06 August 2025) — International tourism constitutes a major part of the global economy. That is probably why services account for approximately sixty-five percent of the world’s Gross Domestic Product. And no one can deny the inordinate importance of tourism in the Jamaican economy. The island’s tourist industry amounts to some 30 percent of economic output and employs about ten percent of the labor force. So, by any measure tourism is the sector that, as with so many other countries in the world, drives the present economy. Nevertheless, it is difficult to ascertain the degree to which this important sector benefits the majority of Jamaicans.

That being so, it would be reasonable to suppose that local authorities consider tourism to be an important economic asset that ought to be integrally linked to all aspects of island life. Instead, it appears that the government merely consider tourism to be a sort of cash cow, rather than a vital resource to be carefully husbanded, and whose benefit should be optimized for the greater benefit of the entire island.

Optimizing Tourism benefits for Education

One way to optimize the benefit of the tourist industry is to collect a special visitor fee from everyone entering the island. This fee should be different from the present tourist tax that goes directly to the treasury’s general funds. That is why this new fee deserves a distinct category – a fee not a tax — with a specific purpose of servicing the educational needs of the entire island. Such a fee ought to be placed in a separately identified fund and administered transparently and independently of the ministry of finance.

In short, it should be placed in a sort of lock box managed by a semi-autonomous authority responsible to the ministry of education.

With such guaranteed funds Jamaica could, over time, rebuild every primary and secondary school on the island. At the same time, the government could re-think the entire idea of education and its role in the community. And that should begin with the very concept of the school. Modern schools should no longer be isolated buildings occupied five days per week for the instruction of specific groups of students.

Instead, the new structures should combine space for a modern, state-of-the-art multi-grade school integrated with a community health care center, local library, police post, and, if necessary, local administrative offices. All of this does not have to fit in a single building but should be contiguous – across a common courtyard or divide by a single street.  That way the compound could be open seven days per week and serve important community functions beyond mere formal education. After all, education is much more than mere literacy. It is the preparation for useful citizenship as well as the acquisition of the basic skills needed for a functioning civil society. Such an efficacious education is enhanced when students observe daily within the same complex various occupations such as nursing, postal service, police activities, fire fighters and local administrative officers working together in close proximity. Some of these non-teaching individuals have the potential to be mentors or models of adult public service. And by consolidating these activities, it would be easier to establish the mutual respect that minimizes violence and disrespect for social order.

The Madeira Model

The model I have in mind is based on my experience over several years visiting the island of Madeira, a 309 square mile autonomous Portuguese outpost in the North Atlantic about 250 miles north of the Canary Islands. Madeira presently has a population of slightly more than 250,000 individuals. I watched the rapid transformation of that small island between the early 1980s and the early 2000s as both Madeira and Portugal adjusted to their incorporation into the European Community. Madeira imposes a municipally collected tax of €2 euros per night for a maximum of seven nights on almost every tourist bill. The income is devoted exclusively to education at all levels. The government mandates twenty five percent of the collected fees for administration with the rest assigned to all educational levels.

Not surprising, Madeira today has one of the most modern, accessible and impressive educational systems anywhere in the world. When once I visited a rural mayor’s office in Maderia and asked to see the elementary school in the same building, the mayor replied that he could tell me what each grade was studying at the time I was there – and he proceeded to do so without consulting any notes. At the university in Funchal, the capital, I envied the up-to-date electronic connectivity in the classroom in which I was lecturing – despite the fact that I was then on the faculty of one of the best universities in the USA. Moreover, like such advanced countries as Switzerland, Luxembourg, Germany and Canada, teachers are respected and rewarded. In Madeira the average high school teacher earns about US$40,000 per year with good benefits and excellent working conditions.

The Madeira model could work in Jamaica. Assuming that in Jamaica the tourist charge on four million visitors begins at a modest US$1.00 per person, the educational fund would start with a guaranteed sum of US$4 million. That should be sufficient to upgrade and modernize several schools per year, providing an autonomous solar system, adequate water supply, and classrooms with electronic wiring to enable students and the community to connect to the wider world and keep abreast of all artificial intelligence developments. Where the school has a library, that could also serve as a community library with electronic access for the public as in Peru. With such a system Jamaica could have one of the most advanced educational systems anywhere.

Political will and commitment

For such a system to work, however, both political parties would have to make a serious long-term commitment to support it beyond the life determined by a general election. But it is imperative that the administrative authority be semi-independent and its operation be absolutely transparent. Some years ago, Argentina established a similar system devoted to strengthen education and the arts but it lacked independence and after a few years the accumulated funds were rolled into general revenue thereby immediately destroying the project.

Jamaica is notorious as a site where good ideas die prematurely. So even if this is a good idea, the likelihood of it finding a sympathetic ear among the political hierarchy there rests between slim and absent. After all, it seems that teachers and schools in Jamaica struggle to get respect and support. An idea to help them, then, is unlikely to find much traction.

© The Ward Post / Dr. Franklin Knight