Three days ago when commissioning a new primary school at Tuschen, President Irfaan Ali announced that schools would be given greater autonomy to manage their own affairs. This, he said, was intended to reduce the bureaucracy involved in fulfilling their needs. In a swipe at regional officialdom he went on to observe that some decision-makers misused their power. “There is a system that is very centralised with too much bureaucracy and too many power brokers,” he was quoted as saying. He alluded to some “little superpowers” at the regional level who “believe that the authority given to them is to control how much chalk goes into a school,” never mind it is the government which provides it.
The new policy, he explained, is to give more power to the schools by disbursing directly to them, but the oversight will be exercised by the Parent-Teacher Associations and others, and the schools will be held accountable. “Let the PTA know what is disbursed to you so that we can develop greater management capacity, capability and leadership at the local level,” said the President, “and have greater involvement in the communities and the delivery of service.”
The President is certainly right about too many layers of bureaucracy encumbering the schools, and that they should be given greater latitude to manage their own affairs. Monitor-ing them, however, will be the issue, and one can only wonder whether the PTAs, or some of them, at least, are in any position or have the necessary skills to take on this task. Apart from anything else it will require some consistent work and input from them, and many parents, even if they devote time to the matter of their children’s education, will not have extra space in their lives for holding their schools to account on a systematic basis. The teacher component of the PTAs is embedded in the school structure, and will not always have the objectiveness which is necessary.
As things stand PTAs vary enormously in their effectiveness, and at a minimum they will need published guidelines about how they will be expected to operate under this new dispensation. President Ali did mention that there would be oversight by “others” as well as the PTAs, although he did not elaborate on who these would be. Certainly one hopes that in addition, the Ministry of Education would put in place special auditing arrangements, so that there is not even a whisper of malversation, which potentially could undermine the whole programme.
Various other education related matters emerged at the ceremony, among them the disclosure from Education Minister Priya Manickchand that there was an increase in the number of children in the country, and since there was a large number of migrant children in addition, a lot of schools would have to be built in a short period of time to confront the demand. “We are in need of what would be the most massive infrastructure build-out in education,” she was quoted as saying.
It would be helpful if at some time her ministry would provide data to the public on the increase in the number of children in terms of age groups, and whether it is concentrated in particular locales or is distributed evenly across the country. President Ali, for example, said that the new school in Tuschen was a response to the overcrowding in Region Three’s schools. The only comparative data on the subject (albeit imperfect) which is currently available relates to the census figures for 2012 and earlier. In 2002 the number of 5-9 year olds countrywide was listed as 97,434, and this had decreased to 71,268 by 2012. A five-year-old in 2012 would be 15 today, so one might have thought that fewer arrangements catering to secondary education needs, at least, might be required than would have been the case at an earlier stage. Certainly in terms of the 15-19 age-group, in 2002 it numbered 67,454, and in 2012, it had grown to 84,798. Not all of those, however, not even perhaps the majority would have been in school.
Of course, since there are still not enough secondary schools to accommodate all children post-Grade Six, the real issue is primary schools. And where that is concerned, one can only note the drop in the 0-4 year old category between 2002 and 2012. Twenty-one years ago that figure was 89,696, and ten years later it had declined to 70,440.
However, it would seem that in the course of the past decade the school-age population may have increased. What Ms Manickchand did say during the Budget debate earlier this year was that the student population had grown from 185,000 in 2019 to 193,000 in 2022. Since she gave no breakdown of the age categories covered, it really can’t be compared with the situation as reflected in the censuses of the last twenty-odd years. It may be too that in terms of more money to spend on physical plant it is not only a question of more students, it is also a matter of being able to bring down class sizes.
In terms of the locations where the Minister listed new schools as being built, with the exception of Tuschen, these were in interior locations, such as at Hosororo and Kwebanna, Region One; Orealla on the Corentyne and Jawalla in the Upper Mazaruni. The increase in the Indigenous population generally has been noted for some time.
The public is entitled to know what the geographical distribution of the school population is numerically speaking, and the age cohorts involved. And surely the Ministry must have immediately to hand exactly how many migrant students they have to cater for, and the age breakdown of these.
