Prime Minister Gaston Browne says his administration’s move to cover CSEC examination fees and eliminate tuition at national tertiary institutions was “not done for political reasons” but to remove longstanding financial barriers that prevent young people from pursuing their education.
Speaking Saturday on the Browne and Browne show, the Prime Minister said the policy is intended “precisely to ensure that no one is precluded from sitting a subject or several subjects because of a lack of money,” and to guarantee that “every single youth in this country… will have the opportunity to access university education not because they do not have money but because they have the ability to pursue” their degree.
Browne linked the government’s position to his own upbringing, recalling that he grew up in a single-parent household and could not afford exam fees. “My father was a deadbeat father… so it’s my late grandfather who actually covered the cost otherwise I may not have been able to sit those subjects,” he said.
He argued that many families still face similar hardships, noting that some parents “had to sell a pig, sell a cow” to cover exam costs and that some students have been unable to sit their subjects at all due to financial constraints. “It’s a real issue… you have people out there who are generally struggling,” he said.
Browne also criticised what he described as public political posturing by two opposition parliamentarians, saying they had recently highlighted their payment of exam fees for individual students. He contrasted this with his own practice of assisting families “routinely for years… and at no point I ever repeated that I helped to pay for anybody’s subject.”
The Prime Minister further referenced an earlier incident involving MP Algernon “Serpent” Watts, accusing him of “public shaming” a mother who sought help paying exam fees for her children. He said the encounter “was one of the most dastardly acts committed against any individual in this country.”
As part of the government’s broader education agenda, Browne reaffirmed that tuition at the University of the West Indies Five Islands Campus will become free for Antiguan and Barbudan citizens after planned expansion works, and that fees at the Antigua and Barbuda College of Advanced Studies (ABCAS) will be eliminated beginning next school year.
“There are some who argue that perhaps we should limit the amount of subjects that we pay for,” Browne said. “My position is they sit as many as they can. If it’s 15, we’ll pay for all 15. If it’s 20, we pay for all 20.”
He added that the government is committed to “removing the barriers” and “removing the hurdles” that stunt national development, particularly for young people.