Radical reform is needed in education

Jul 13, 2017 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Any analysis of the 2017 National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA) which suggests that there was an improvement over the 2016 performance is bound to be flawed, because it ignores an important variable – the standard of the examinations in 2016.
The 2016 examinations were prepared in collaboration with the Caribbean Examinations Council. A number of students, including some of the top students, complained that the Mathematics component was extremely difficult.
The students were clearly not properly prepared for some of the difficult questions which were set in the 2016 assessment. No wonder there was such a deep decline in Mathematics and a less serious decline in the other subjects.
The schools were better prepared in 2017. The teachers would have been able to identify those areas which proved problematic in 2016. As such, the scores in Mathematics improved appreciably – so much so that it requires investigation as to whether the level of the questions set was lower in 2017 than in 2016.
There were improvements in other subject areas, but these did not match the degree of improvements in Mathematics. How then does one account for this dramatic improvement in Mathematics and not in the other subject areas.
The reasons being provided by the authorities include the interventions which were made. But these interventions were not in Mathematics alone. So why was the same or almost the same improvement not seen in the other subject areas?
The improvements may have had nothing to do with the interventions. It could well be a case of the 2017 paper reverting back to its old standards of “easiness”. It is an issue which should be examined in the analysis of the 2017 results.
The government wants to reform the educational sector. This reform must be based on a flawed analysis of the most important examination in the primary sector. The analysis must correctly explain the disparities in improved performances, as measured in passes in Mathematics as compared with the other subject areas.
The educational system in Guyana is ‘hit and miss’. If you ‘hit’ you get a good school and you are likely to do well at the secondary level. If you ‘miss’ you are consigned to a relatively poor school and you end up having a substandard secondary schooling.
This is the tragedy of Guyana’s educational system. It is a system in which the top performing students get the best schools and those that do not qualify for the top schools end up at lowly-rated schools. What happens therefore is that at the main secondary examinations, CSEC, the students from the top schools dominate and the students from the lesser schools do not do as well.
The top 5% get the best schools; the other 95% get the lesser schools. This is a recipe for national disaster. What it suggests is that interventions are required that do far more than simply look at the percentage passes at the NGSA. The system should not favour the top 5% of students. It should favour all students.
The system of performance placements however cannot be dispensed with. The top students should continue to be placed in the top secondary schools. Otherwise students will not be motivated to do well.
Attention, however, must be given to raising the standards of the schools that the other 95% of the students have to attend. This requires more than an overnight intervention. It requires a revolution in the educational system which must begin at the primary level.
The rot begins at the primary level. It is at that level that students are being shortchanged by the quality of teachers. There are far too many untrained teachers within our primary school system. These teachers should be rooted out. They cannot be expected to improve the performance of the children at the primary level.
But there is equally also a class correlation which may be at work. The better students will most likely be those students whose parents can afford to send them to extra lessons or who are themselves better educated. This leads to another type of problem, in which the ‘haves’ will do better, generally, than the ‘have nots’.
We will, in other words, end up with a system which discriminates against the poor. The present system suits the middle and upper classes. It guarantees them domination. And this cannot be fixed by tinkering. It has to be fixed by a radical overhaul of the educational system, which will not happen if the APNU+AFC middle class remains in control of educational reform.

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