This former education official once stifled creativity

May 11, 2017 Letters

Dear Editor,
Chairman of the Education Sector’s Commission of Inquiry, Mr. Ed Caesar said, “We must treat them better; we must empower our head teachers, too, and let them understand that they can think outside of the box. We must praise their creativity.” (Kaieteur News, May 4, 2017). This has to be the most definitive statement made about education in the last 20 years. Unfortunately, Mr. Caesar should not be the one making such a statement. In his capacity as Chief Education Officer, Mr. Caesar took away creativity from teachers and replaced it with inflexible record keeping. He did not empower head teachers, instead he made them into clerks.
For his information, I wish to remind him of Circular 6 of 2004 issued on the 18th November, 2004 signed by him as Chief Education Officer. This circular outlined 57 records which must be kept by every school. This circular was indicative of a shift in policy in 2004. Following the issuance of this circular, 11 Regional Education Officers, 3 Assistant Education Officer, two Deputy Chief Education Officers and the Chief Education Officer produced the School Records and Documents Manual which outlined every facet of records to be kept.
It meant that the Ministry of Education was no longer interested in creativity; instead was interested in accountability. This has been the interest of the Ministry of Education since 2004. This was a culture created and advocated by the very Caesar who is now advocating creativity. The same undercurrent exists now, except that the number of records has increased from 57 to more than a 100.
The Ministry of Education conducts supervision of schools centrally through the MERD unit, Secondary Sector, ACEO (Primary), ACEO (Nursery) and NCERD and regionally through the Departments of Education. So many agencies supervise schools, yet things are still the same.
The reason for this is that all these supervisions focus on whether the infinite number of records is present. The instrument used for the supervision focuses on the presence of the record document and not on its quality. It cannot focus on the quality of the records because there are too many. For example, every school must have an Action Plan however, no supervising officer have ever checked to see whether the Action Plan is being implement and whether it is working or failing. Imagine, a classroom teacher has to prepare 10 pieces of records before they go to teach a class.
Is this necessary? Doing this means there is no time for creativity.
What is worst is that every supervisory arm of the Ministry of Education has a different understanding of what each record should be. As a result, records are changed, discarded and adjusted every time a supervisory team visits a school. There is no place for creativity. Conformity is demanded. Non-conformity means disciplinary action. I put it to Mr. Caesar, which will teachers do? Conformity or creativity?
I find it unacceptable that the former CEO would say at a public forum that “some of the Regional Education Officers don’t seem to understand their responsibilities.” Firstly, he is just passing the blame for a situation which he has created. It can be argued that we have a decentralized education system, which Mr. Caesar would contend, when he teaches his Issues in Education at UG. But this is far from the reality. In reality, the Departments of Education are the whipping boys for the incompetence of the Ministry of Education. The PIMU unit of the Ministry of Education, through a Deputy Chief Education Officer, directs the action of each Department of Education in this country. Additionally, the MERD unit was created to supervise the Departments of Education.
No policy can be implemented by the Departments without the knowledge of the Ministry of Education and the Departments of Education can only monitor through guidelines given by the Ministry of Education. The Departments, knowing that they will be subjected to the rigorous inspection of MERD, do what they are told to do by the Ministry of Education. Mr. Caesar must understand that the sins of a man live long after he gone into that gentle good night.
Mohammed Hussain

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