The records of the Ministry of Education will show that in 2003/4, when I was the minister, it began “discussions with the Ministry of Health (MOH) and the Ministry of Labour, Human Services and Social Security (MLHSS) to discuss areas of possible collaboration, e.g. in the areas of screening for disabilities and the allocation of subsidies for parents of school age children” (“Ministry of Education Achievements 2003 and Targets 2004”). What was in mind then was the establishment of a conditional cash transfer scheme (CCT), which had already shown its usefulness in many Latin American and Caribbean countries.
At the time, CCTs were relatively new. The first large-scale scheme in the region, the Programa de Educación, Salud y Alimentación (PROGRESA), was established in Mexico in 1997. The Jamaican Programme of Advancement through Health and Education (PATH) was established in 2002, but the programme that caught our imagination in this part of the region was Brazil’s Programa Nacional de Bolsa Escola and Programa de Erradicaçao do Trabalho Infantil, (PETI) which was established in about the mid-nineties.
Typically, these programmes provide money to poor families on condition that they send their children to school or regularly take them to the requisite health care facility. But the types of benefits offered vary; some programmes offer cash while others offer cash and other benefits or services such as food items, relevant training, etc. As late as