Latest update December 31st, 2024 3:30 AM
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District Education Officers must deliver a higher quality of education – Shaik Baksh
District Education Officers (DEOs) have started a five-day workshop as they work towards the delivery of a higher quality of education in Guyana.
Minister of Education, Shaik Baksh, declared the workshop open yesterday morning at the National Curriculum and Education Research Department. In his address to the participants he said that there needs to be greater value for money in the delivery of education.
He said that functionaries cannot hope that the system will perform. “It will only perform if we make it do so.”
Participants at the opening session of the workshop
The workshop which will operate under the theme “Efficient and Effective Supervision of the Schools Instructional Programme” will address a number of areas at the DEO level.
These include record keeping and accountability, governance of schools at the board level, human resource issues and concerns and effective utilisation of information technology systems in use by the Ministry among numerous others.
The Minister noted that there is a real need to address the issue of responsibility in the system considering that the central administration has been taking on tasks that should be relegated to regional administrations.
According to Baksh there seems to be a disconnect between the regional administrations and the regional education departments. He said that perhaps these offices are unable to supervise the work of the regions.
This lack of ability sees the Central Ministry handling small tasks that are putting pressure on them. The Ministry needs to focus its resources on policy, policy implementation and monitoring, education and service delivery and improving education outcomes.
The Minister pointed out, however, that there are measures that will be implemented to address the matter, one of these being the hiring and placement of Administrative Officers within the education departments to take on the administrative duties.
These officers will therefore remove the burden of data collection and reporting from the education officers, allowing them to spend more time in the schools where they are needed.
He also addressed the issue of head teacher responsibilities and performance.
He spoke of the literacy programme where a lot of head teachers seem to keep themselves out of the loop even though it is one of their primary responsibilities to ensure that every single child can read and write at an acceptable level.
Minister Baksh said that many of them do not have literacy plans or even lesson plans for their classes but he also pointed out that there were other head teachers who were to be commended for their efforts and the performance of their schools.
The DEOs, he said, need to pay more ad hoc visits to the school especially during the crucial hours when these programmes are being undertaken to measure participation and efficacy, and to work towards better management of head teachers’ time.
The Minister charged the DEOs to go out into the field with a new dynamism and zeal in educating the youth that will rub off on those that look to them for guidance. He said that as of September there will be more pressure on everyone to deliver to the country that it deserves … an efficient education system.
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