THE Government’s proud move to provide autonomy, decentralisation and modernisation in the country’s education system, with the attractively titled School-based Management Initiative, does not reach as far as allowing school principals to talk freely with reporters.

This is why, for example, the Principal of the Diego Martin Government Primary School said she officially could say nothing about why the school felt it could not accommodate the request from a parent who is looking for a space to set up a homework centre in the Diego Martin district.

Madame Principal was sure, nevertheless, that she had had no such request or even an approach for one.

Anjanette Payne says differently. One of her associates spoke with this principal about the idea and was told that the school had concerns about such a project. She raised ’security’’ as one of them. Madame Principal does not recognise Anjanette Payne’s name.

Ms Payne is a single mother of four, who has been moved to go on her own to seek to establish such a centre, because of the need she sees among her own children for the kind of support that such a centre can provide. Other mothers like herself must work more than one job just to provide the basics for the children whom they must raise largely on their own.

They are concerned about the deficiency in their ability to dole out discipline to their children. Educational needs continue to suffer as well, and they see the Government’s promotion of homework centres as a means to a critical end.

From what they took as the rejection from the Diego Martin Government School, her organisation, the ’You Make Me Smile’’ Foundation, approached both the Diego Martin Boys’ and Girls’ RC Schools. They are otherwise known as St John’s Boys’ and Girls’.

Equally conscious of the bounds within which they must remain regarding contact with reporters, both school administrations nevertheless explained that for them the project, as they understood it, was too much for them to handle.

The outlines presented to them by Ms Payne called for storage space and classroom space which neither of them could offer. At the girls’ school, as well, it was felt the project itself needed finessing, questions arising which needed answers that could provide added comfort.

Undaunted, Ms Payne has gone off on her own, seeking now to raise money and to acquire premises sufficiently suitable for what she and her team have in mind.

The education, discipline and control of the children now possibly at risk are motivators strong enough to scale any and all hurdles. For the moment at least.

Whether or not the Ministry of Education believes this is a project worthy of its consideration and assessment, remains an open question. The Ministry’s Chief Education Officer didn’t consider it one requiring his attention anytime this past week. His Communications Unit promises in its message greeting to ’respond to your call as soon as possible’’. Perhaps three days later is not soon enough.

Eight paragraphs on education in the 2009 Budget managed not to convey a single mention about the plan to establish homework centres in the country, while great emphasis continues to be placed on the State’s virtual takeover of Early Childhood Care and Education. This was re-emphasised as the front end of the Government’s intention ’to provide quality education from nursery to tertiary’’.

In the budget for the current fiscal year, there are 13 paragraphs on education, which had been earlier identified among the major ’priorities’’.

’We will continue to engage the NGOs to partner with the Government to establish Time Out and After-school Study Centres,’’ the Finance Minister announced on September 7, in paragraph 12 of that section. But that’s all there is. It is enough, however, to propel and sustain Anjanette Payne and her group, in keeping their dream alive.

Josephus Phillips has on-the-ground reason to have enlisted for this project. He teaches at the now renamed Diego Martin North Secondary School. Among his current charges in the classroom are too many children who ought not to be in secondary school at all. They didn’t make the grade, on the basis of the Secondary School Entrance Assessment.

He was neither afraid nor ashamed to say so publicly, one day last week on the TV6 Morning Edition programme. Those are some of the children, Mr Phillips is convinced, who are in dire need of the space, the time and the resources Ms James and the other mothers are turning up every and any stone to make possible.