Dear Editor,
Please allow me to add a few words to the current discussion concerning the importing of Math and Science teachers.
First, I would like to point out that, no matter what steps are taken, improvement in examination results will not be evident for many years to come. The changes can come only gradually and have to begin with primary education. So it is not fair to say that because national exam results have not improved significantly in a few years, the steps taken have failed. NCERD can train only so many teachers at a time and the influence of those teachers will take some time to reach all the schools in Guyana.
I can speak only for Mathematics teaching as I have no brief for Science.
I would like to suggest that bringing foreign teachers to our classrooms is not the best solution. We cannot afford to bring teachers for all the schools and we cannot afford to carry on this practice for very long. Also, there are some excellent teachers in Guyana and it would not be fair for them to be compensated less well than their foreign counterparts. It may well lead them to seek better conditions outside of Guyana.
When I was in Jamaica, there was a programme called REAP, which seemed to promise well for the country. First of all, a thorough examination and rewriting of the Mathematics curriculum for primary schools was made by a large collection of teachers from the university, the training colleges and teachers from primary and secondary schools. This was followed by a survey of textbooks and production of some supplementary material.
Then the most enterprising teachers of several primary schools in different parts of the country were trained in weekly workshops to use more interactive methods while also improving their content. They were to use these methods in their own classrooms and, after a while, each teacher was expected to share what she (he) had learnt with teachers of her own and other schools in the neighbourhood. I remember one of my friends who was chosen for the programme being so excited when she was to teach Probability to her Grade Two class. The children also were excited and soon had all the family on the Probability trail.
In this way, the new methods and ideas penetrated a large number of schools in a relatively short while. The programme was very well supervised and monitored. I left Jamaica soon after this phase was completed and I do not know what was done to carry this over into the secondary schools.
I have been involved in the teaching of Mathematics at all levels for over fifty years and I would very much like to see a vast improvement in the way that the subject is taught in our schools.
Yours faithfully,
Mary Peter Ngui
