Schools’ Disarray

Sep 18, 2013 Editorial

In what has to be a case of “man bites dog” journalism, it was reported in our Tuesday September 17 edition that parents actually blocked the gates of a school to prevent their children’s attendance. The parents from La Parfaite Harmonie area were not Luddites fighting against “progress” but were actually furious about the state of their Primary School which had only been built two years ago.
In addition to the failure to repair a burnt-out section, which forced the headmistress to function from an area adjacent to the school’s canteen, parents were protesting overcrowding, mosquitoes, extreme heat and skin infections. Over in Port Kaituma in the North West District, parents also closed down a school for unsanitary conditions and overcrowding.
While these two examples might appear to be a minuscule fraction of the schools in the country, they actually represent a mindset of those who administer the educational system that affects every school, primary as well as secondary. The mindset can be characterised by the phrase, “not my job, man”. The educational system of this country was decentralised because it was felt that the people at the closest level to the service offered would be most concerned to have it function at optimum.
So what we have in Guyana is a Ministry of Education (MoE) that is at the top of the hill, dispensing the orders and the funding, with officials of the Education Department of the Regional Democratic Committees (RDCs) supposed to be executing the tasks at the bottom. But, as is frequently the case in such situations, quite a lot falls into or between the cracks. At the beginning of the schools’ year two weeks ago, some schools’ opening had to be deferred because they were not fit for habitation by students. The work for the Region 4 RDC had to be taken over by the MoE.
What this exposes is a total breakdown in a macro-institution where there is no correlation between the span of authority and the span of responsibility. Everyone ends up pointing fingers at “the other guy”. In the school at Parfait Harmonie, it was alleged that $14 million had been allocated by the MoE to fix the fire damage, but as is usual in the system, no one took the project to completion and no parent or the community was informed. We therefore end up with very irate patents and students that have a very poor opinion of what it means to be “educated”.
And it is in this impression fostered in young minds that the greatest damage is being done to our youths. The teacher in front of the class might repeat all sorts of exhortations from books or from notes of lessons as to the purpose of education. But what the child imbibes is the reality of officials in positions of authority, and presumably educated, unable or unwilling to earn their salaries and perform the jobs they were hired to do. This is what they will emulate when they get into positions of authority and the cycle of ineptitude and mediocrity will continue.
Why is it so difficult to institute a system where, during the two-month “August” holidays, the RDC’s Department of Education conducts an audit in collaboration with the schools’ administrations as to the internal maintenance work that has to be done, in addition to the routine cleaning and weeding of the schoolyards? The manpower and materiel needs can be discussed as part and parcel of the exercise and if perchance, as is inevitable in these matters, there will be some tasks that cannot be attended to in the given timeframe, announcements can be made to affected parents and students.
This lack of scheduled maintenance is sadly prevalent in all public works – especially where there is dual control between the centre and the “local organs of democracy”. It is perhaps time that the schools be totally devolved to the new local government mechanism that has been promised for so long.
At least we will then all know where to point fingers.

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