In August, the state of affairs in the education sector demanded that Education Minister Priya Manickchand, returning for her second tilt at the portfolio, hit the ground running. It was not just a question of her having to bring a measure of clarity to the prevailing national uncertainty as to just where our education system is headed but also to provide leadership in the country’s response to the disfigurement that COVID-19 had visited upon education delivery since March this year.
Before that, however, Minister Manickchand, upon her return to the Ministry, became preoccupied with closing what she felt were the leadership gaps at its highest professional levels. That would have accounted for the restoration to the Ministry of the two functionaries who had immediately succeeded one another in the position of Chief Education Officer (CEO). One of the two, Dr. Marcel Hutson, has now been restored to the office of CEO. Some other senior personnel shifts were effected, seemingly in response to perceived leadership weaknesses at various departmental levels.
Simultaneously, the Minister turned her attention to the largest elephant in the room, the disfigurement that had been visited upon the education system by COVID-19. Here, she appeared to be relying heavily on the public outreach skills which she would have acquired from her previous incarnation as Education Minister; except, of course, that this time around, her mission would be far more urgent, more demanding. The reason? She knew only too well that whatever progress was to be made in trying to right the ship as far as the COVID-19-related fractures were concerned, required the support of two separate ‘publics,’ teachers and parents. Without support from these quarters she would be on a hiding to nowhere.
To backtrack momentarily, the current travails of Guyana’s education system have their origins in the inability of successive political administrations, over several decades, to effect incremental upgrades that would, over time, render the system more responsive to the country’s developmental needs. This is not a debating point, it is an irrefutable fact. The political administration of the education portfolio has always been burdened by generous measures of ‘fair promises,’ lip service and prevarication. The repetitiveness of these practices has stripped them of what traction they may have possessed previously. Here, the point should be made that a great deal of the difficulty associated with current attempts to roll out a virtual teaching/learning regime at a time when it is needed, has to do, in large measure, with the failure of the system, over time, to invest in the information technology requisites and to reinvent the teacher training curriculum to respond to the evolving requirements of our education system. These failures are all a function of what appears to have been a continually handed-down lack of vision.
The current sense of urgency that attends the discourse on the limited resumption of actual (as against virtual) education delivery is underpinned by uncertainties that have to do with the vagaries of the behaviour of the coronavirus. Minister Manickchand is aware, for example, that her own best intentions can come unstuck at the drop of a hat by the vagaries of the pandemic. However much we ‘talk up’ even a partial re-opening of schools, at some levels, nothing is set in stone here. Moreover, whether the reopening of schools at the agreed levels will win the widespread confidence of parents is by no means a settled issue at this time. The Ministry can roll out edicts regarding what it wishes to see happen, but the final decision does not lie altogether in its hands. Since we continue to be hostages to the vicissitudes of COVID-19, decision making in the education sector, as in the various other sectors, will continue to be dictated by the vagaries of the behaviour of the pandemic rather than by any fanciful wish list that we may have. Accordingly, such decisions as we may make at this time regarding the resumption of seats on benches, are, for the immediate future, no more than leaps of faith.
As if the challenges associated with fixing a hobbled education system are not enough, Guyana, like the rest of the region, is embroiled in the unfolding imbroglio arising out of the Caribbean Examinations Council’s recently stated concern over what has been described as “systemic over-marking as a compassionate bye to students,” which, when the euphemistic overtones are set aside, means cheating. Then there is, we are told, the issue of teachers’ failing to submit some School-based Assessments to the CXC headquarters. But teachers alone should not be made to ‘carry the can’ here. These issues had to have been left to fester in an administrative cesspool of unpardonable absence of checks and balances higher up in the system. Accordingly, such ‘punishment’ as derives from these recent revelations, ought not, in fairness, target teachers alone. Blame and penalties should reach across the board.
Those issues, however, will, it seems, have to ‘stand in line.’ Going forward, immediately, the Minister and her team, have – as we say in Guyana, ‘bigger fish to fry.’
