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But only a short portion of the interview was about politics - over an hour was spent talking education. And that as because yesterday, we showed you the PUP's grand plan to improve the country's education system, if they win the next election.

They say that they have extensive education reforms to implement if given the opportunity. And tonight, the Education Minister, Patrick Faber, is suggesting that they are making empty promises, and some parts of their plans are already implemented in the Ministry, in one form or another.

Tonight, we share with you his comments on 3 topics. The first is the education budget.

Yesterday, the Opposition Party pointed out that in 2018, the Barrow Government spent over 268 million dollars on education, which is just over a quarter of the annual budget. From the PUP's perspective, that is simply the Barrow Administration throwing money at the problems, without any meaningful results to improve the quality of education.

Here's how Faber responded:

Hon. Patrick Faber- Minister of Education

"The budget has indeed increased but it has increased primarily because the Government continues to pay and honour the increments of teachers every single year for the last 13 years of the UDP administration. The Government has given in excess of a 30% salary adjustment that the teachers and public servants required and requested. Those things are factual so you will expect, every year in fact, unless we are retrenching teachers or we are firing teachers or lowering the number in the teaching staff or the non-teaching staff for that matter, these things are expected to go up. Every year teachers get their increments and we've seen where the Government has held true to its promise of honouring those salary adjustments. I reject out of hand what the PUPs have said about the Ministry being top-heavy, so to speak. In fact, the Ministry in terms of its overseeing role, doesn't do enough in my view because the bulk of that money doesn't go into policing the system and ensuring that we get quality. The bulk of that money goes into paying the salaries of the teachers, which by their estimates, your estimates, all estimates who are looking on, we don't seem to be getting the best bang for our buck. The bulk of that money. So, I am amazed when they try to criticize all these non-educator positions, which are the very minimum contributions out of the national budget for education that really goes into policing the system and keeping things afloat. I mean somebody like a watch man, just given the environment, these things are needed. But by and large the things that the Ministry utilizes in order to police the system and to keep things in check, that needs to be improved tremendously. But we can't seem to find the money for that because we spend a lot of money on paying salaries and that continues to not give the kind of yield that we ought to be getting. I don't think that is a secret, it is not an attack, it is a fact."