Education: The budgetary allocation and the results

Oct 29, 2013 Editorial

Whenever children do exceedingly well at external examinations the schools that the children attend are proud. Depending on the level of the passes and the number of children who do exceedingly well the entire nation basks in the glory of the children.
Countries like the United States pride their development on the performances of their children. There is always the competition and even pressure on the children to be the best that there could be. Many of us sit at home and watch televised broadcasts of Spelling Bees. The children spell words that most of us never heard and in the end the school and the state enjoys more than a moment of glory.
In like manner, Guyana was screaming from the rooftops that it managed to secure five of the eight awards that were up for grabs. These awards by the Caribbean Examinations Council are intended to note the achievements of the children. Five of eight is almost a clean sweep and Guyana has achieved this distinction.
There is a saying that success has many parents but failure is an orphan. Many people have latched on to the successes of the high performing five, not least among them the Guyana Government in general and the Ministry of Education in particular. The Minister of Education has linked the performance of the children to the amount of money that the government is putting into education.
The Minister is not letting people forget that there is a direct relationship between the amount of money spent by the government and the results at best or the percentage passes. There is a comparison with the pre 1992 era when the Minister reported that passes in English and Mathematics were no better than eight per cent. She said that today the pass rates are bordering on 45 percent and attributed to the budgetary allocations the government makes to the education sector.
One of the people aware of the government expenditure, Member of Parliament Rev Kwame Gilbert, said that in 2012 the government allocated $26 billion to education. He said that the government increased the allocation the following year to $28.7 billion. Certainly this is no drop in the bucket and suggests that the government is serious about education.
Yet one must wonder whether the allocation is being used to achieve the maximum results. During the pre-1992 era various international bodies promoted Guyana as one of the most literate countries in the world. One of them was the World Bank which placed Guyana’s literacy rate at 94 per cent. Many others reported that Guyana’s literacy level was in the ninety per cent range.
This has changed and we may need to study the reason behind the change. The country’s literacy level is said to be ranging between sixty-eight per cent and seventy-five per cent. There is an indirect relationship between the amount of money spent on education and the literacy level these days. One does not want to conclude that the money is spent on educating a few for the best possible results that would make the nation bask in a sea of glory.
We are aware that for years now some international organisations have been reporting on the level of functional literacy in Guyana. The United Nations Development Programme was one such organization. It noted the brain drain and the fact that a large number of people leaving school and even the University of Guyana were functionally illiterate.
The late Rev Dale Bisnauth was the one Government Minister to publicly acknowledge the level of functional illiteracy in Guyana. At a forum at the National Cultural Centre he said that an appalling sixty per cent of Guyanese were functionally illiterate. Not much has changed although the government is making a boast about increasing its allocation to the education sector.
Many people set store by the reports by the international agencies. Governments do when those reports are favourable. It would be interesting to note that the International Monetary Fund has been reporting on Guyana’s social sector. Those reports do not make for flattering reading.
Then again many reports are fashioned after figures provided by the government and these figures always come back to haunt the government.

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Education: The budgetary allocation and the results

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