Dear Editor,
In Guyana, there are some educators who live with starvation compensation packages and a hostile environment with aplomb and serenity. They toil and tarry, as they impart to and instil in their young charges the timeless elements of character, openness, and what is ethical. It can be overwhelming and unrewarding, but they stay steadfast.
With this as context, I come to that regional umbrella education body called the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC). First, I must question whether this regional entity is about those very things mentioned above that a dwindling remnant of teachers epitomizes, and that which they strive to inculcate in the student population. This would include transparency, disclosure, and minimal standards on all matters ranging from the mundane to the exceptional.
Rather surprisingly, I came across two things, which revealed that the sometimes well-regarded CXC does not reflect what is taught ‒ should be taught ‒ in the classroom.
First, there was the small matter of past examination papers. I tried going back over the years to almost two decades ago (and the years in between) to retrieve some old examination papers, but found that I could not. Oh, they are there, but can only be obtained when paid for, and in foreign currency.
Editor, I appreciate that education is a business, and that the CXC is so oriented. But being unable to obtain old papers from so many years in the past without charge is a bit on the far and dark side. If the poor widow could have spared her mite, then I daresay that the CXC can surely do a little more than two coppers. And when one considers that the inhabitants of the region are generally poor, this business practice becomes even more inexcusable. I perceive it as just another form of exploitation that hurts the already squeezed poor. How can students be told with a straight face in the classroom that they must give back and this is the reality? And that they must take their places as caring and considerate members of society, and through elevated levels of altruism, when it is all about the last penny? Clearly, the grooming towards noble ends does not start at home, meaning at the helm. And as if to add further insult, papers purchased cannot be printed; they only can be viewed online. I understand that printing leads to photocopying, which shortchanges the CXC, but the document was bought. For a pen and paper dinosaur like me, this is torture. This is some business, and with all the associated strangleholds and pressure points in place. As an aside, I should mention that other educational bodies, such as Cambridge release examination papers within six months of the sitting, and they are free. The CXC could learn.
Second, I learned to my amazement that the CXC does not make public its annual financial reports, or any disclosures related to finances. If the organization has done so, then I missed them, and tender apologies. If it has not, then this is at odds with what is demanded of governments and corporate bodies (whether for profit or otherwise in the case of the latter); what is drummed incessantly in the children in the nurturing of prospective model citizens; and what is about minimum standards and best practice, and has to be an integral aspect of key operating principles of any self-respecting agency.
Further, if there is no public release and access to such financial reports, then I submit that this is not only very wrong, but also highly unacceptable. I submit further that it flies in the face of the patient preaching (and that is what it is) by conscientious and honourable teaching professionals in the trenches on such hot-button issues as transparency versus secrecy and accountability as opposed to concealment.
As stated earlier, I really hope that I am wrong on the lack of disclosures. If there are indeed none, however, then the CXC must move quickly to clear the air and set matters right, if only to what is right by its far-flung captive constituency.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
