The Ministry of Education’s announcement last month that the Caribbean Vocational Qualification (CVQ) will be piloted in 11 schools starting next month, is a step in the right direction. It should have been taken a long time ago and one hopes that it will quickly expand beyond what has been indicated. Minister Nicolette Henry made the announcement toward the end of July at the opening of the pre-stakeholder meeting for piloting the CVQ in Guyana. This is being undertaken in collaboration with the Caribbean Examinations Council and the schools earmarked for the pilot are Canje Secondary, Aurora Secondary, New Bartica Secondary, Paramakatoi Secondary, BV Practical Instruction Centre, Parika Salem Secondary, Dolphin Secondary, Belladrum Secondary, Linden Foundation Secondary, St Ignatius Secondary and North West Secondary.
It is interesting and perhaps deliberate that none of the country’s so-called top schools were chosen to pilot the CVQ. One hopes that the reasoning behind this move was to allow for as wide a scope of student beneficiaries as possible and that the ministry would make this known lest the wrong assumption take root. Based on what was said by Minister Henry and others at the opening of the meeting, considerable groundwork has been laid towards ensuring the success of this pilot and it would be a shame if it were marred by negative assumptions.
The fact that there has been and still is stigma attached to vocational or skills-based education escapes no one. This stigma is as a result of ignorance and it is universal. In many countries around the world, technical and vocational education tended to be offered to students who seemed to lag academically. This might have been well-meaning, but it succeeded in attaching elitism to academia and downplaying the value of skills-based training.
As far as Guyana is concerned, that was not the original intention. Initially, technical education was not available, and trades were learned through apprenticeships. There was no certification beyond the person completing the skill training and becoming a journeyman.
After independence, when the government introduced changes to align education with the country’s political and economic goals and needs, it was intended that at the high school entry level, students would have a choice between those offering just academics and those offering academic, technical and vocational teachings. This did not work as envisioned, although the introduction of trade schools offering training and certification did. And a clumsy attempt to fix it with the bringing into being of community high schools some years later, only made things worse. Thankfully, those schools have since been phased out and Guyana is back where it started, trying to find a proper place for technical and vocational education.
This time around, as long as stakeholders remain steadfast, the initiative is likely to work and not a moment too soon. Even though the stigma still exists, there is evidence that students and their parents are beginning to recognise that a university education is not the only path to success. Not only that but the attaining of tertiary education is currently one of life’s more expensive pursuits.
This is not meant to take anything away from the pursuit of academics and the necessity for it, but in the majority of cases, young people enter their chosen professions burdened with student loans. It is much worse when that profession demands going beyond earning a bachelor’s degree, like medicine or law, or if the student/young person simply wants to learn as much as he/she can about his/her chosen field. Scholarships can and do help, of course, but they are usually extremely competitive as there are only so many openings available. A case in point is the recent Chevening Scholarship awards. Eleven Guyanese were granted the opportunity to pursue fully paid, post-graduate studies at universities in the United Kingdom, but there were likely four to five times as many applications, like in Jamaica, where, according to a news report, 19 Jamaicans were granted the same honour out of a total of 200 applicants.
Meanwhile, currently in the United States, according to statistics, the demand for skilled labour is at an all-time high. It is estimated that for this year, there were as many as 6.7 million openings for trade-specific jobs, including in the construction sector. Though employers have not openly admitted it, the perception is that this is due as much to current immigration policies as it is to the fact that young Americans had tended to eschew trade school. However, there is hope that this could quickly be turned around since trade school programmes are short, unlike university/college degrees, which usually take four years. A skill could be properly taught, in some cases, in as little as six weeks.
In addition, among the current generation of millennials are a great many creatives whose path to entrepreneurship took the technical/vocational/ trade school route. Their testimonies, widely available owing to social media sharing, are making all the difference.
Guyana’s future, one hopes, would see entire schools dedicated to technical and vocational education existing alongside traditional secondary/high schools as well as a few focused solely on STEAM (science, technology, engineering, the arts and mathematics) and their graduates being afforded equal attention and plaudits. This is the way the world is heading, and once the will exists, Guyana could stop playing catch up.
