Guyana’s education system is at the “cusp of a service delivery crisis” due to systemic flaws which successive education ministers have failed to address, according to Minister of Education Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine.
Roopnaraine, in his presentation on the budget in the National Assembly last Friday, noted that what the new administration once viewed as incompetence has been recognised as a “reflection of very real technical limitations” within the sector.
The minister noted that the deficiencies within the sector were revealed by the audits commissioned a few weeks after he took office. The information provided by these audits have in the first phase led to the establishment of a Commission of Inquiry into the education sector.
This inquiry is expected to produce the data most necessary for the understanding of the many problems in the education sector, including the low and declining performances at the Grade Six exams.
The minister noted that coinciding with the decline in the public education system has been an improvement in the performance of private schools.
These results, he explained, had led the ministry under the previous administration to implement “several policy initiatives which have not resulted in any consistent and meaningful improvement in all indicators.”
In outlining how the new government will be addressing these issues, Roopnaraine explained that a National Advisory Council on Education will be established. Through this council the ministry will embark on the construction and implementation of an evidence-based strategic plan, with strong monitoring and evaluation components to guide on both successes and failure.
Roopnaraine explained that all stakeholders, including former education ministers, are needed to assist in the formulation of an education strategy that will be based on certain core tenets. These tenets include a broad multi-strategy framework on national education reform and development; a reconciliation of existing internal policies and operational strategies and external consultancy recommendations; and any relevant multilateral strategies, particularly focusing on the use of technology in education as well as on hinterland development. The minister stressed the intention to work with all stakeholders to develop education in Guyana.
Among these stakeholders are parents, whom he expects to play an active role in their children’s education through a strengthened Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) framework. It is the minister’s intention to establish a National PTA Organisation and create a PTA Secretariat to monitor PTAs throughout the country.
He noted that there is not one solution to the issue of access to education and that the responsibility of taking advantage of accessible education is not the duty of the government but of the community and of the home itself working in conjunction with the government. To this end, the government is looking to reestablish regional education committees.
“The more we can cooperate with whole communities and local government organs to define priorities to education access, the more effective will be our policies,” the minister said.
Additionally, efforts will be made to seek to modernise and redesign the curriculum.
The next five years, he noted, will see greater strategic functional cooperation between education and the ministries responsible for health, tourism, business, communities, indigenous affairs, social protection and social cohesion.
Quoting Minister Jordan’s budget speech, Roopnaraine said, “an effective education requires active collaboration among all sectors, thus one practical step we have taken with this direction at the ministry is to work toward reinstating and formalising an inter-sectorial agency committee which would see the permanent secretaries of education and other ministries meeting to periodically share information and strategise about related areas that they cover.”
