Gains in education sector not proportionate to spending – Minister

Aug 02, 2014 News

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 – measures apace to address shortcomings

By Sharmain Grainger

Although Government’s investment in education has been sizeable over the years allowing for significant improvements in the sector, there are some evident shortcomings that have the potential of hampering the gains made.

In fact, Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand, has acknowledged that while improvements in the sector range from more trained teachers to an increase in the number of children attending school, the results obtained are not up to par with the level of spending in the sector.  “We have not seen a corresponding shift in the results that is proportionate to the spending…We are training the teachers but somehow or the other, that training is not translating into the amount of learning our children should have,” admitted the Education Minister.
It is for this reason, Manickchand, who was at the time addressing a gathering of education stakeholders at the Bartica Secondary School on Tuesday, said that her Ministry is on a mission to solicit support to combat prevailing challenges that affect the teaching/learning process. “We in the Government, we are investing the money but where is the gap? Why is it when we had 30 per cent trained teachers, eight per cent of our children were passing; we now have 70 per cent trained teachers and only 30 per cent (are) passing…for the amount of money that went into the system it should be higher,” insisted the Education Minister.
Moreover, the Minister said that there is dire need for all education stakeholders to collaborate to help build on the improvements in the sector.
It was however, the view of one parent that a major shortcoming within the system is the fact that some teachers refuse to pay attention to slow learners. Speaking with conviction, the woman said that there are some teachers who are merely in the profession to secure an income, and therefore do not have an interest in ensuring that students learn. “I am speaking from experience…there are teachers who love what they do and they do it well…in every profession there are people who love what they do, but there are some teachers who don’t look at the children who are slow learners.”
“The slow learners go to the back and the fast learners are to the front…” stressed the woman who claimed to be the mother of a slow learner.
Despite moves by the Ministry to seek support to address the pass rate, Assistant Chief Education Officer (ACEO) (Primary), Mr. Marcel Hutson, said that efforts have already been engaged at the primary level to tackle the situation.
He, like the Minister, emphasised that enormous sums are plugged into the sector on an annual basis to pay salaries, provide teaching/learning materials and training, but noted that this does not translate into the anticipated performances.
“This thing is getting to me! You see a whole host of activities, a whole set of money being pumped into education and we have not been seeing the concomitant returns and I think the time has come for us to seriously re-examine what we do at the level of the school, at the level of the home (too)…” Hutson asserted.
He further vocalised his conviction that improved performances at any school would require the leadership of that school to be strong, coupled with the support of a strong Parent Teacher Association (PTA).  “The PTA has to be vibrant and the school must have a plan for improvement in place,” Hutson pointed out.
It was against this backdrop, the ACEO (Primary) said that he took a decision to meet with all District Education Officers about a month ago in order to highlight the need for attention to be directed to schools’ performances. “What we are actually doing now (is monitoring), because it would appear that the issue is monitoring. You can’t have 25 trained teachers and not be producing; something is desperately wrong there,” said Hutson.
And so at the primary level, he disclosed that efforts have been made to “roll out a Plan of Action where we will look at the poor performing schools and not only ask for certain things to be done, because, what use to happen in the past we asked for things to be done and we assumed that these things were being done and they were not…So that is where we get into problems.”
With this mechanism in place, Hutson said that District Education Officers, on a monthly basis, are required to identify the five poorest performing schools in their respective Districts after which they are expected to recommend how to implement the Plan of Action. This, according to him, is designed to ascertain progress made by schools monthly.
“We have to devise ways and means of ensuring that we get the work done, because for the amount of money that is being placed in education, we cannot be having only 30 per cent of our children who are literate across grades…that is unacceptable,” said the ACEO.
He underscored too the important role of the parents to the process, adding that “if you (parents) back up what the school is doing and the community at large come on board, I think that we can tackle the problem that we have, frontally…”
In describing the prevailing state of affairs as “painful,” Hutson shared his belief that “the time has come that we make full use of the money that is being placed in education so we can have the kind of performance we are really seeking.”

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