Education system failing Region Nine – AFC Chairman

Sep 01, 2014 News

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– Annai and Aishalton Secondary Schools record 25 percent passes

“It is better to have quality teaching under a benab or a tree than to build these beautiful buildings where our children are to failing” – Hughes

By Abena Rockcliffe
Chairman of the Alliance For Change (AFC), Nigel Hughes campaigning in Region Nine last week, highlighted the fact that the students who sat Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) exams in that region this year didn’t do too well.

In fact, Hughes went the mile in telling hinterland parents that the performance of their children is below satisfactory.
However, the attorney-at law, declared that “it is no fault of your children.” He told residents of Region Nine, “it cannot be that the children in Georgetown and Essequibo are smarter than those in Region Nine. It has to be that the human resources are not coming here.”
Hughes was equipped with an official Ministry of Education release of the CSEC results for the three secondary schools in Region Nine; Annai Secondary , Aishalton Secondary and St. Ignatius Secondary Schools.
Annai and Aishalton Secondary Schools recorded a 25 percent pass rate. This means that, in two of the three schools on Region Nine, three out of four students are failing.
St. Ignatius barely scraped a 50 percent pass rate which means that one out of every two children who wrote CSEC at that school failed.
As Hughes addressed different gatherings in Region Nine, at villages such as Baitoon and Maruranau, he made it a point to note that the buildings housing the schools are “fine and dandy, but the results are not…So we have new buildings in which we are training our young people to fail.”
“Imagine 75 percent of the students failed. This is unacceptable. You guys cannot sit back and allow this,” said the AFC chairman.
Hughes told the residents of those indigenous communities that they cannot allow their children’s future to just go down the drain.  He urged them to demand more from their present government until a new one is elected.
“In demanding more, you need to ensure that these nice schools have good qualified teachers to teach your children… more money has to be spent on human resources rather than infrastructure. It doesn’t matter if they’re taught under a benab or a tree as long as they have good teachers. This Hughes said, even as he acknowledged that a conducive environment for learning is indeed important.
He said that the people must demand that the government make it worthwhile for qualified teachers to travel from “wherever” to mould the future of students of Region Nine.
The politician said that teachers working in far flung areas such as Baitoon and Maruranau must be given significant allowances.
According to Hughes, “otherwise, all your children will be able to say is that they attended school in a beautiful building, which makes no sense. The floors can be made of gold, the roof of marbles and the walls of diamond; it will make no sense unless there are trained teachers. And for teachers to come here and work, they need more money.”
He even told parents that if the AFC is to get into government, in addition to ensuring the existing schools get trained teachers, the Party will ensure that Region Nine gets a technical school.
The attorney-at-law said that, “not all of us may want to be lawyers and doctors; we need to make preparations for those who may want to be plumbers, carpenters and engineers.”
He said that in that way, Region Nine will have its own skills, “so when a road needs to be built, no one from Georgetown will have to come do it for you. The government can put the contract in your hands.”
It appeared obvious that residents of the different communities not only agreed with Hughes’ points but felt a sense of comfort, and their confidence in a better tomorrow was revived.
Some parents explained that the School Based Assessments (SBAs), which account for approximately 50 percent of the total makes in CSEC, pose as a serious problem.
One woman at Baitoon said, “It is real difficult to get this SBA thing right, it takes a lot of money and most of the things you have to do in SBA is hard to get done in the hinterland. Then some children don’t have parents to help them so they would require the help of the teacher and as you know, we have limited teachers. I can recall having to help my daughter and her friend.”
Residents also lamented that “English is not our first language and it is indeed sometimes hard for children to cope.”
A few weeks ago, CSEC results came out. Announcing the results, Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand informed that the performance in Mathematics moved from 28.92 per cent in 2013, to  38.7 per cent this year.
The Minister’s declared that “this is the best that Guyana has ever done in the history of our country in Mathematics.”
In fact, Minister Manickchand pointed out that the general analysis of the Caribbean Examination Council’s (CXC)’s examination this year reveals that the overall pass rate at the General and Proficiencies for Grade One to Three was 60.21 per cent.  This, according to her, represents a marginal improvement from the 59.31 per cent in 2013. However, the overall Grade One to Four Pass rate for this year was a noticeable 88.44 per cent.
The May/June CSEC examination saw a total of 13,724 (4,887 males and 8,837 females), with 8,642 being from public schools and 5,082 from private school, participating.
Local candidates, according to the Education Minister, wrote 35 subjects and based on the results obtained, there were excellent performances in 12 areas where the Grade One to Three passes exceeded 75 per cent. These subject areas were: Agriculture Science, Food and Nutrition, French, Home Economics Management, Information Technology, Physics, Religious Education, Theatre Arts, Electronic Documentation Preparation and Management, Physical Education and Sport, Additional Mathematics and Building Technology.
Manickchand, at that time, mentioned nothing about Region Nine.

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