JAMAICA is devoting a rich-country share of its national income to education but the returns are falling far short of expectations, raising fresh questions about whether billions of dollars in public spending are being converted into the skilled and productive workforce the economy needs.

That is the central conclusion of a new report from the Caribbean Policy Research Institute (CaPRI) and UNICEF, which argues that while the country spends heavily on children, weak accountability, fragmented systems, and underinvestment in the first 1,000 days of life are limiting the impact of those outlays.

“We spend like a rich country but we’re not getting the outcomes of one,” said Dr Diana Thorburn, CaPRI’s director of research, at the launch of the report, Room for Improvement: The Gap Between Public Spending and Child Outcomes in Jamaica, on Thursday.