September, Education Month, serves as a timely reminder of what remains the gap between the various challenges in our education system and our failure to effectively address many if not most of those challenges, despite our significant financial investment in education and the unending public discourse, over the years, about what the problems are and how they can be fixed. Which reminds, of course, that not a great deal has been heard of late about the likely fate of the Education Bill that surfaced under the previous political administration nor what has been the most high-profile development in the education sector under the present administration, that is, the launch of a Commission of Inquiry into the education system in Guyana in April this year.
In the case of the Commission of Inquiry and arguably in the face of expectations to the contrary, it has simply failed to secure any real traction with stakeholders and unlike the COI into the Public Service it has simply not gotten – at least up until now – any serious and sustained attention in the media. This point is being made against the backdrop of all that we know about the problems that have, for years, plagued the country’s education system, the consequential decline in our education system that has resulted and the declared sense of urgency articulated by our policy-makers with regard to the remedying of those weaknesses.
Foremost amongst the range of issues for which the Ministry of Education has, for years, come in for criticism are its inability to repel the challenge of violence in schools and amongst schoolchildren, failure to establish a successful working partnership between schools and parents (which is something that this newspaper has reported on from time to time), the inhospitable physical condition of some school houses, (which is incompatible with the delivery of high-quality education), underachievement in some important subject areas at regional examinations and the insufficient incentive for us to get the best out of our teachers.
All of these, and more, are challenges that need to be addressed comprehensively if there is to be any significant qualitative improvement in our primary and secondary education system though there is no serious evidence that any of these challenges have been tackled by the authorities aggressively and with any serious conviction over the years. Needless to say there have been no positive results in any of these areas to speak about.
If the Commission of Inquiry in the education system in Guyana launched in April might have been a good place to start, it is clear that what had been envisaged as a critical event in a process designed to seek to remedy the critical shortcomings in our education system has secured far less than the anticipated traction with the relevant stakeholders – particularly teachers and parents – so much so, that the poor attendance at the opening event became a matter of public comment in sections of the media. Not much is known about what has transpired since then at the level of the COI so that quite what will come out at the other end is hard to tell.
If it may be demeaning to describe our education system as drifting it is still difficult to determine clearly the direction in which it is going. In the first instance, the physical state of our education infrastructure across the country viz. the state of school houses, access to state-distributed text books and other materiel points unerringly at government’s inability to afford free education. Then there are those inadequacies that exist at the level of our teacher training both in terms of what experienced professionals say is the acute shortage of trainers at the Cyril Potter College of Education and the continual failure of the College to attract the more qualified school-leavers into teacher training, a failure that has to do with the inadequate remuneration and lack of any other serious incentive to enter the teaching profession.
Incidentally, it needs to be stated that there is no longer any traction in what, for years, has been the anecdote to the effect that the vocational nature of the profession means that teachers should not anticipate conditions of service comparable with those of other professionals. That, these days, only serves as a disincentive to practising teachers and a lack of encouragement for those who might have an inclination to become part of the profession. It is, to say, the least, a nonsense to ask those whose task it is to produce the best and the brightest to themselves work for pittances and live lives of neglect and self-denial while those who urge upon them that course of action, primarily politicians, show no inclination to walk the same road.
And when all of the various challenges confronting our education system are taken account of, it is difficult to spare the Ministry of Education entirely deserving criticism for its continued failure to recognize that some of the system’s more pressing challenges viz. high level of non-attendance at school, high percentage of school dropouts, violence in schools and among school children and academic underperformance can be far more effectively addressed if the relationship between the school and the parent were to be improved. This newspaper has, on more than one occasion, articulated the view that what the Ministry of Education should be striving for is a compact/contract between the school and the parent that commits the two sides to specific deliverables aimed at, as far as possible, providing assurances with regard to the behaviour of the three most important stakeholders in the education system, the child, the teacher and the parent.
The sheer number of shortcomings afflicting our education system and the urgency associated with remedying those ills requires, a priori, that the Ministry of Education itself be managed by a team of highly trained, highly competent and sufficiently incentivized professionals with a strong collective sense of mission, a clearly defined list of priorities and a road map for the realization of goals that are linked unerringly to tackling and, hopefully, remedying the problems. For several years, the agenda of the Ministry has not appeared to be in sync with tackling the major problems facing the education system in a systematic and (equally important) sustained manner. This is precisely why there has been an ebb and flow of the same challenges over the years. Moreover, sometimes it seems that the public pronouncements that emanate from the Ministry favour, much more, a continual theoretical articulation of the challenges rather than any practical focus on meeting those challenges head on. That has not worked and never will.
Free education may be a costly (perhaps even unaffordable) investment though, in the case of the Ministry of Education, the time has come to reassess the investment in terms of the wisdom of just what we spend on. Better incentivized teachers (and other education professionals) are indispensable to a significantly improved quality of education. There is no way around that and the longer it takes to provide teachers with better pay and other conditions of service the more the system will decline.
Then there is the question of wholeheartedly bringing parent stakeholders on board. Up until now they remain on the periphery notwithstanding the fact that their inputs are critical to meeting and effectively addressing some of the main challenges facing the education system. Those may not be all of the challenges confronting our education system but addressing those can be critical building blocks to seriously starting the process of overhauling our education system. One does not get the impression that the Ministry of Education is as yet in that zone.
