The education conundrum

Jul 01, 2010 Editorial

Each year the grim reality hits home. There are going to be children who are not academically qualified and for whom the country has not made adequate provisions. This may sound a harsh indictment especially when one considers that no government enjoys being criticized for its programme.
This is not to say that the government is not trying to make use of its human resource by ensuring that every individual be trained to play a meaningful role in the society. True, some established institutions have fallen by the wayside through lack of attention and a shortage of skilled people to man them. Examples are the institutions offering technical programmes and those catering for the early school leavers.
This year, 16,351 pupils entered an appearance for the Grade Six Assessment. Of that number 743 will be heading to the five top secondary schools in the country. A whopping 220 will be heading to St Rose’s High School where, according to the officials at the Ministry of Education, the school administration has been reporting a declining student population over the preceding years.
Of the remaining 15,000-odd pupils all are expected to be heading to a secondary school, even if these are the tops of primary schools. Hopefully, this temporary accommodation will help some of them to try a little harder and get back into the education system. But the vast majority will only get a two-year lease on life. They will then fall into the academic wilderness.
There will be the few whose parents would reach out to relatives overseas for help to get them into one of the numerous private schools that have mushroomed. However, the grim reality is that there may be no more than fifty secondary schools in Guyana. If each should take 120 pupils then that would account for six thousand of those who wrote the exams. The remaining 12,000 would have fallen through the cracks.
Some time ago we suggested that the entire education system needed revamping. What we did not insist is that the parents be brought into the system although this is easier said than done. We do know that parents see their role in the education system as merely sending their children to be taught and if the child runs home with a complaint, to physically attack the source of the complaint.
Most parents are themselves products of a failing education system so to them education is not the tool it is supposed to be. These people are themselves barely literate and would feel incompetent to lend their presence to schools where efforts are being made to ensure a proper system.
Some simply believe that the responsibility for educating their children rests exclusively with the school. They would always be heard to lament when school closes and fervently praying for the institution to reopen. These are the parents who simply could not be bothered by a bad report card. This is where the decline in education is and where it continues to reside.
These parents are also the ones who sometimes go out on a limb to ensure that their children present a flashy as opposed to a neat and tidy appearance. In the end the child enters class more concerned about appearance than about learning. And the teachers, conscious of this and the likelihood of abuse if the child opts to file a complaint about a criticism, hold their tongue.
But there is another aspect to the decline in the education system and it has to do with the placement of teachers in the schools. Traditionally, the most experienced teachers were placed in the lower classes and they served to properly ground the pupils. Because of their presence most children who attended school were literate by the time they were in what is now Grade Six.
Experts always say that one should not fix something unless it is broken. The education system was not broken but we tampered and tinkered with it. Today we are talking about remedial classes during the August holidays. We are also talking about an examination that will precede the Grade Six Assessment.
The authorities are now grappling with what has become a serious problem. They cannot get enough men back in the classrooms but they can certainly get them involved in the support systems such as the parent-teacher associations.
At this time there is no ready solution to some of the problems. Illiteracy is certainly growing and we shudder to think about the future.