Revamp the education system

Sep 01, 2009 Editorial

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Schools reopen today and thus another cycle begins in the academic life of Guyana. By the time the term ends a number of children who would have written the Grade Six Assessments would have settled into their new classrooms, in a secondary school, and would have begun the race to be the best students in the country.
At the end of the last school year, some of the top performers at that level continued to excel at the higher examinations. But there were those who were top performers five years ago who seem to have fallen off the radar. This is to be expected given that some children suffer burnout because of the pressure placed by their parents very early in life.
What is distressing, though, despite all the talk of improved grades and heightened performances, is the steady decline in the performance at the level of Mathematics, the Sciences—Physics, Chemistry and Biology—and English Language. These are core subjects that determine the future of the world; these are the subjects that help prepare the doctors, the nurses, the technicians, the electronic people and all those who now make the world into a village so that people have ready access to so many things and above all, information. It is therefore not accidental that recently about ten per cent of those training to be nurses passed the examination. They remained out of touch.
Guyana is boasting of moving toward being the agricultural hub of the region. It had institutions that attracted students from other parts of the Caribbean, institutions such as the Guyana School of Agriculture and the National Agricultural Research Institute. Over the past few years the foreign students topped the graduation lists, suggesting that Guyana was slipping behind in providing high level technicians. Absence of funding has seen the closure of the latter.
But what about the classes in the primary schools that introduced children to the world of plant life—the experiments with the seed, with the chemicals that show the production of carbon dioxide—and we are talking about global warming and low carbon development strategy.
There was a time when Guyana had a surfeit of such teachers. Even Grade B secondary schools had ample Mathematics and Science teachers so that this country invariably boasted of excellence in those subjects at the highest examinations offered by secondary schools.
Today there are reports that schools in the city must share such teachers. There are combined classes; the Education Ministry must do something drastic to reverse the fortunes in these areas.
Letters appearing in these pages bemoan the apparent obsolescence of the English Language as is reflected in the news media. No longer will parents ask their children to read the newspapers to grasp a command of the language and to broaden their horizons.
There is some effort to halt the decline, but even the Cyril Potter College of Education is hard pressed to find teachers with an adequacy of skills.
Most severely affected are those institutions that once provided an abundance of technical education. There is the argument that the skilled people have all migrated. President Bharrat Jagdeo himself admitted that Guyana lost its skilled capability some two decades ago. This realisation has done little to slow the decline.
Many contractors who operate today will talk about learning by trial and error. Some use their money to recruit people who they think can execute the jobs, and this explains the rapid deterioration of those jobs almost as soon as they are completed. In the olden days jobs lasted. The Soesdyke/Linden Highway was built to last for twenty years. It did, and lasted even longer. The Demerara Harbour Bridge was built to last for a similar number of years. It did, suffering the odd collisions by outgoing vessels and having to be repaired.
The Berbice River Bridge experienced problems almost as soon as it was completed.
Toward the end of the last school term, Education Minister Shaik Baksh announced that there were plans to extend the retirement age of the teachers so that the older and still better qualified ones could continue to impart the kind of knowledge that would prove critical between success and failure.
But parents should not leave everything to the students. In this the age of computers, information is at one’s fingertips. Even some television programmes offer help, but these are often ignored in favour of the video games and the movies.
Imagine that the time is fast approaching when Guyana may be unable to offer Chemistry at CAPE, the intermediary examinations leading to the Advanced Levels. There are to be an addition of sixty-five new doctors in the coming weeks. We doubt that their replacements are in the background.

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