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WHAT WENT WRONG?

Mar 11, 2014 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The perfect government is yet to be found. Everyone at least can agree with this proposition, even in Guyana where opposition parties are apt to score political points whenever there are perceived failures or mistakes on the part of the government.
Mistakes and failures will be made. The public will always be willing to concede and accommodate some amount of mistakes and failures as part of the learning curve.
Far more important than failure is the lesson to be learnt from falling short of expectations. Therefore, while some failures are to be tolerated, what is unforgiving is the absence of a process that addresses these failures.
In recent weeks, reports have surfaced of a large number of nursing students who have failed their examinations. This massive failure rate has reportedly taken place in the context of a large number of admissions to the nursing programme.
Reports in the media have revealed that out of the 120 persons who wrote the final nursing examinations, only nineteen passed. Of note, also, was the high dropout rate. More than half of the students entering the programme did not persevere towards the final examination.
In examining this problem that has arisen, it is important that the situation be addressed in its totality. If the massive failure rate occurred in the context of an excessively large number of admissions to the nursing programme, then the first issue to be addressed is whether there was a relaxation of standards of admission and whether this contributed to the unusually larger number of admissions than what existed prior.
In other words, the first issue to be addressed is whether the standards of admission were compromised to admit persons not qualified to enter the programme.
The second issue to be addressed is whether proper tuition was delivered to the students. While large class size will present some problems of accommodation, they do not necessary translate to mass failure rates. Indeed, large classes should not create such a massive failure rate as what is being said to have existed.
Something went wrong with this particular batch of students and there needs to be a detailed investigation that covers every possible scenario.
In order to account for the massive failure rate, it is also necessary to examine how well the students were tutored. Obviously if students were not grasping certain concepts, this could be a failure on their part but it can also be a failure on the part of the teachers. There needs to therefore be an analysis of whether the students were regularly tested before final examinations and what would have been their scores. This would allow for an evaluation of the progress being made by the students and why, if any, corrective action was not taken earlier.
The large dropout rate would indicate a serious problem with students’ performance and it needs to be asked whether this dropout rate was unusual and what efforts were made to examine this problem.
An evaluation also needs to be made about the marking scheme and the degree of difficulty of the examination questions. Were these consistent with the standards of the past, or were the examinations set at a level that were not in sync with what the students were being taught?
These are the important questions that need to be addressed before wild speculation takes over. The answers to these questions should at the minimum provide the Ministry of Health with an understanding as the reasons for the massive failures which judging from reports was unprecedented.
It is no use pronouncing at this stage as to what went wrong without all the facts being known and without all the angles being covered. This is a serious issue that suggests a breakdown somewhere along the line.
It is an issue that needs to be highlighted but not one on which political capital should be sought.
Guyana has historically graduated large batches of nurses many of whom have excelled overseas in the nursing profession. That situation cannot suddenly change overnight.
Something went wrong and needs to be examined. And in this process of examination those who failed and those who dropped out should be surveyed to determine what they felt went wrong.

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