Minister Shaik Baksh says government has “implemented significant reforms” in the education sector over the last five years and has reaped the benefits with top NGSA and CXC scores, while dismissing calls from the opposition political parties for the revamping of the sector as “uninformed statements.”
In his address at the launch of the Voluntary Mentoring Programme on Friday, Baksh said numerous interventions at primary and secondary schools “and the hard work of the ministry’s team, headed by Chief Education Officer Olato Sam, have been bearing fruit.” According to a ministry press release, he said evidence that the reforms have been having an impact was revealed in the top scores at the National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA) and the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) exams.
The overall passes in grades one to three have improved by 42 per cent in the past 19 years. Guyana also produced top students at the CSEC this year and has done so for the fifth time in the past six years. In addition, Guyana won 16 of 28 CSEC awards up for grabs, the release said. In addition, at the 2011 NGSA, more pupils from rural schools made it into the country’s top one per cent. This is an indicator that government is making laudable progress in the quest to achieve equity in education and improve educational outcomes, the minister said.
According to Baksh, a number of new methodologies in the teaching/learning of literacy has also been introduced at the pre-primary and primary levels. These include shared reading, guided reading and the Language Experience Approach at the primary level. The Literacy Hour – a programme designed to enhance pupils’ vocabulary, comprehension and reading skills – has been implemented in grades one and two at the primary level to teach students to read by Grade Two.
“Completion of primary education in Guyana has been ranked among the highest in the Caribbean and Latin America,” the release said. The Education Panorama 2010 Report said Guyana has 100 per cent students’ completion rate at the primary level, above Barbados with 97%, Brazil with 95% and Suriname with 91%. The ministry has also reduced the drop-out rates at primary and secondary schools by 50% over the past five years. Today, the drop-out rate is 5.5 per cent at the secondary school level and two per cent at the primary level.
Baksh said improvements in students’ performance at both the primary and secondary levels are linked to the number of trained teachers in the school system. Currently, more than 70 per cent of teachers in the school are trained, contrary to the 60 per cent inferred by APNU Presidential Candidate David Granger, he said. The minister also said Granger lumped the number of untrained and unqualified teachers in the same category, while in 2010 the ministry had 565 unqualified teachers in the school system, which is about 6.5% of the total number of teachers in the system. This figure would be lower for 2011 as the ministry had adopted a policy to cease hiring unqualified teachers, except in hinterland regions where a critical need exists, he explained. The pass rate for Mathematics has also been a concern, not only in Guyana but throughout the Caribbean where the average pass rate is about 31 per cent. Guyana has implemented several measures to boost students performance in this subject are, in the same way it has managed to continuously improve the pass rate in English, which now stands at 61 per cent. Baksh said that while the education system is not at the pinnacle it is improving, noting that the United Nations Human Development Report has ranked Guyana among the highest developing countries in the education index. The Report placed Guyana 37th in the world third in the Caribbean after Cuba and Barbados and second in South American after Argentina.
