Dear Editor,
On Monday, Guyana held its annual celebration of the greatest malpractice in Education – that of announcing the names of 4% of children obtaining top marks in the annual horse race among sixth graders called the NGSA (National Grade Six Assessment). And I call as my first witness none other than Minister Manickchand, introduced twice by Ms. Cumberbatch as “Dr.” Manickchand, (congratulations if indeed Ms. Manickchand obtained an earned doctorate). She said, “I ask you to remember this is a placement exam. It does not determine whether one is bright or not. (It does). It is just a truth that QC cannot hold more than 120 students. So it is not that you are not good enough for QC (You are not). It is that QC doesn’t have the physical space for you. We commit to making sure all our high schools deliver a high quality of education with committed teachers, an adequate supply of text books and other learning material. Right now many of our schools that are not celebrated deliver excellent results at CXC in the high 90s.” (So whose fault is this?). If the Minister believes what she says, why did she bring the children in a face-to-face setting to celebrate the fact that “QC” and the other 4 Region 4 schools are “prized” schools in the annual bullfight won by 600 of the 14,032 students who wrote the exam from across the country? The 4% who “won” the top 5 Georgetown schools are what we call the “academically gifted” students, many of whom went to private schools. Clearly, all the hullabaloo is to portray “QC” as the Harvard of the Guyana high schools, and is a celebration of the malpractice of the State of Guyana designing a system of unequal schools and sending the neediest students to the weakest schools. The Minister encouraged the losers, don’t feel sad if you did not get QC.
Maybe the Ministry can provide for the public a spreadsheet, a school equity audit by region, that shows the subjects taught at each high school for CSEC and CAPE, comparison of facilities – computer labs, other school technology such as copiers and printers, classrooms, libraries, science labs, lunch rooms, number of graduate teachers, number of trained teachers, number of untrained teachers, availability of textbooks and workbooks, school supplies, Internet access, availability of clubs and societies, child nutrition programmes, sports opportunities, support services such as social workers and counselors, functioning School Boards, access to water and electricity, etc.
Successive governments have perpetuated this NGSA sorting mechanism and nobody has bothered to question this year after year. Are we such numbskulls as a nation that we cannot see how absurd it is for us to have an exam that sorts students by marks and assign them to school of varying quality? How can we intentionally, deliberately, create unequal schools, and design a system whereby a student in Region 1 (with the right marks) has to come to Georgetown if he or she wants a “good” education. We need civil society to form a “Guardians of School Equity” group to help our Minister to change this pernicious, iniquitous system. The Minister seems committed to school equity and I think she can lead the process successfully. This civic group can help the government to put together a “School Equity” Strategic Plan for the country. “All children matter” regardless of the region they come from. We cannot have one system for Region 4 and inferior systems in the other 9 regions. We must put an end to this historic injustice.
I trust that the PPP government would come up with a new 5-year Education Plan focused on “School Equity.” Accomplishing this is a step towards a 21st century education system. Nation, wake up! They have already sold out our oil, and we needed the oil revenues to upgrade all our high schools to be like QC and the top Georgetown schools. When we have equitable schools, the NGSA may not be needed anymore as a sorting mechanism. Let’s fight for our children’s education! The results still show a high rate of failure and this is unacceptable.
(NOTE: In the USA, it is illegal to disclose student grades to the public. Those are confidential records. In Guyana, we even put their pictures with their names and scores!).
Yours faithfully,
Dr. Jerry Jailall
