Dear Editor,
I visited my son’s school, Westminster Secondary, recently to enquire about payments for his CSEC exams and submit information for financial assistance. In passing, the senior teacher I was speaking with explained that if subject teachers do not recommend the child, they can still sit the examination for the subject, but the parent has to pay the full fee, thus not being able to benefit from financial assistance for whichever subjects the child was not recommended. She advised that this was the ‘rule,’ the policy of the Ministry of Education.
Such a policy however, has not had the benefit of a larger perspective on the socio-economic dynamics of our society, with poverty rates rising in recent years, many parents are hard pressed to feed and properly clothe their children for school, much less spend time they do not have tending to their children’s homework and assignments as a financially capable family would. Many children come from what I consider dysfunctional homes, often run by single women, with their fathers caught up in the matrix of life in Guyana. It goes without saying these hard working moms do not have the time like their counterparts in normal families to attend to the needs of their children.
Regardless of their appearance also, nutritionally deficient children will very likely have varying degrees of difficulty learning, and hard-pressed teachers who often feel that they are being denied fair financial compensation in the form of appropriate salaries, very often take the easy road of not spending enough time on these children, a situation exacerbated by large class sizes, the percentages relative to the class of which rise significantly in the lower tier schools.
The dire conditions arising from these drastic instances of poverty, which hit above 40% recently, was exacerbated with the COVID-19 which lasted from around April 2020 to January 2022, I think it was. With unemployment rising astronomically among many middle- and lower income families due to the COVID-19 lockdowns, the lives of families, parents and children, were completely upended with respect to functioning as they would, much less with acquiring laptops and internet service to ensure their children were able to attend classes.
COVID-19 conditions were so dire globally that even the Caribbean Examinations Council adjusted its timetable for these examinations and adopted multiple choice-based examinations in recognition of the challenges faced by the Caribbean’s children. COVID-19 lockdowns affected all children where their education was concerned, so while the lockdowns may have ended in 2022, children are still coming through the system with truncated levels of education which require much remedial attention and immensely more work by teachers to bring these children up to exam readiness.
I wish to therefore ask the Ministry of Education to permanently scrap this rule/policy of unfairly penalizing parents by denying financial assistance when their children are unprepared for examinations, circumstances which unfortunately result from government’s larger economic policy framework, the numerous challenges faced by teachers and students, and the unmitigated impact on students as a consequence of COVID-19. Parents whose children’s schools advise them similarly are also encouraged to make their voices heard at the ministry.
Sincerely,
Craig Sylvester
