Dear Editor,
The summarised press release on the World Bank’s funding of a new Education developmental project identifies the following targets to be addressed:
– 60,744 Students
– 2,128 Teachers’ and Principals
– 600 TVET Students
– 140 Secondary and Post-Secondary Trainers Subject Areas
– A new curriculum for Grades 7-9
– Training teachers on the new curriculum
– Teach students with different needs
– Coaching and mentoring teachers
– Instructional leadership and managerial program’ for Principals
Accommodation
Secondary Schools to be built or rehabilitated: Without question this is a most laudable human resources project. Multi-pronged as is, it will require the most focused coordination, with trust being a critical element amongst the adults, who must be trained in a ‘new curriculum’, as well as be ‘coached and mentored’. Principals must wonder about being instructed in ‘leadership’. Of course, the summarised press release makes no mention of the periodicities of the respective interventions, which leaves for enquiry as to when and where more ‘secondary schools will be built and rehabilitated’. In the milieu one is left to ponder how this initiative reconciles with those teachers involved in the earlier GOAL exercise.
Then there is the question to be raised about those teachers whose immediate termination was recently threatened if they did not apply for entry into the Cyril Potter College of Education (CPCE), and subsequently be licensed. So far as the TVET developmental programme is concerned it is interesting to learn the impressive numbers of 140 trainers that would develop 600 students, albeit in a range of unspecified disciplines – particularly against the current background of a non-operational Board – which means that no legitimate certification is feasible – leaving the provisions of the CSME in limbo.
Intricated in this highly desirable developmental project is the logic of having to restructure curricula to be taught by better qualified Teachers, reporting to more informed Principals, the eventual result being:
i. the elimination of under-qualified teachers
o Non-Graduate Head of Department
o Non-Graduate Senior Master
o Non-Graduate Head Grade A
o Untrained Graduate Master
o Temporary Qualified Master II/III
o Temporary Unqualified Teacher
o Teacher Aide
o Acting Teacher
o Pupil Teacher I/II
ii. The consequential restructuring of the colonial job hierarchy obtaining within the Teachers’ Service, which must acknowledge higher and better specialist skills.
The eventual outcome must therefore be the conduct of the most comprehensive job evaluation exercise – to establish revised grades and related compensation and other benefits – this providing opportunity for discussion with the Ministry’s promised partners – the Guyana’s Teachers Union.
It has to be borne in mind that ‘teachers and principals’ constitute the most target-oriented and productive work group across the public service employment spectrum. It has to be remembered that education creates the next generations’ capacities to fulfill the overall strategic developmental targets of the nation’s future, provides inspiration for aspiring leadership. There is nothing for any of the parties to lose. All citizens are bound to gain.
Sincerely,
E.B. John
