15,000 semi-literates each year

Apr 01, 2010 Editorial

Yesterday, some 18,000 began writing the examination that is now known as the National Grade Six Assessment. It has been around for a very long time under many guises, one of which was the Government County Scholarship. Other guises were the Common Entrance and the Secondary Schools Entrance Examinations.
This examination separates the children who are at the age where they begin to show different levels of academic skills. The cream of the crop goes to the leading secondary schools and not much else happens to the remainder.
Assessors believe that the leading secondary schools cater for the top ten per cent. This year that figure represents some 1,800 children. If each leading secondary school takes 100 then there are 18 such secondary schools in the country. There may be a few more, so one can assume that about 2,500 of the children writing the examinations this year would pursue a secondary education.
The nation is going to celebrate the achievement of the top performers whose photographs would grace the pages of the newspapers with reports on what led them to perform so well. There will be smiling parents and teachers who would forget that there were other children in the class and who appear to be forgotten in the glow of the success of a few.
The nation simply does not accept the fact that this year there will be some 16,000 children who would be lost. Many cannot repeat in school and the schools that are intended to help them along are not doing that because these too have been converted to secondary schools of sorts.
In the past there was the recognition that each year a large number of children are discarded from a very early age. Some parents sought private schools because they needed to find something for their children to do. Some resorted to the Adult Education Association and some to programmes offered by technical and vocational institutions.
And so we have the group that would include children seeking to develop skills at home management, carpentry, mechanic, electrical works, masonry and the like. But there are those whose parents could not care less about what the children did and so we have children begging on the streets, some manning stalls and some seeking employment as labourers in the marketplace.
The law stipulates that each child is entitled to an education until 16 years of age. That is the system of compulsory education. But there are not enough schools to accommodate this number of slow learners each year and there are not enough inspectors to monitor their attendance at school, whichever one they manage to attend. But many, especially those in the depressed areas, simply allowed the children to roam the streets.
Former Sports Minister Gail Teixeira once spoke about the mad rush by some parents to get their children into the Guyana National Service which can only accept less than 100 young people.
It is not that the problem of failure at this examination that affords entry into secondary schools is something new. It was for this reason that there were multilateral schools and community high schools. These have been converted to secondary schools to cater for the better learners so that the poor ones are condemned to the garbage pile.
The government boasts about its expenditure in education, but it is failing to accommodate the failures. If the rate continues, then at least 150,000 semi-literates or illiterates would be walking the streets within ten years. Perhaps there is already this number because this student wastage rate has been ongoing for some time.
It should come as no surprise that the criminals are so young, some as young as 14. Having left school so badly equipped to secure a job, they turn to criminal activities. Some, because of their limited academic ability, hence their inability to reason, side with drug dealers. These are the ones who are caught almost every week.

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15,000 semi-literates each year

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