On a mission to transform the education system…CEO Marcel Hutson is a ‘Special Person’

Jul 15, 2018 Features / Columnists, News, Special Person

---

“I think that is why we are here, in these positions, to see our children fulfill their potential and live purpose-driven lives; to see transformation. It hurts me when I see children who can’t read and write; some of them can’t even speak properly. My view is if the children can’t read first then they can’t do anything else, not even mathematics. They will not be able to understand concepts so we have to work towards a transformation.”

 

By Sharmain Grainger

An ambitious plan has been crafted for the country’s public education system. The plan in essence is one that is geared at preparing children to excel in all subject areas when they participate in national examinations.
Admittedly, achieving such a feat would not be an easy task, but the country’s Chief Education Officer [CEO], Mr. Marcel Hutson, is hopeful that it will come to fruition during his tenure.
“This is my dream before I depart this office and I am departing in a few years…I am hoping that when I would’ve left people can say never before in the history of our country we had our children receiving 50 percent or more in every subject area,” Hutson posited.
Currently, Hutson is working closely with the Minister of Education, Ms. Nicolette Henry, and other key education officials to put measures in place that could help improve the performance of the nation’s children.
He does not intend on settling for anything less. In fact, all his life Hutson has been driven by the desire to see positive transformation in just about every sphere of life.
To achieve this goal, Hutson simply takes all of his concerns to God in prayer at the start of each day. As an Ordained Minister attached to the First Assembly of God Church, Hutson has over the years seen many things perceived impossible become reality.

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS
But he wasn’t always an outstanding figure in society proposing ambitious plans. In fact, his upbringing was rather modest.
Hutson was raised in a section of East Ruimveldt, Georgetown called ‘Back Circle’, an area notorious for many bad things back in the day. But some good things have emerged from that locale too. Residents of that community can safely say Hutson is among the good things that that community has yielded.
Hutson was born on August 30, 1965 to parents Richard Price [now deceased] and Winifred Hutson.
Ending up with his mother’s last name was certainly not due to an absentee father. Rather it might have been due to the fact that his father was far too busy being the main breadwinner to his family which consisted of 10 children, five of whom were the product of his relationship with Hutson’s mother.
“My father he always lived with us and he made very good contributions in my life, but for some particular reason he was not too keen on going to hospitals to sign [birth certificates]. My mother said that the nurses who were managing the ward said that if he didn’t come they would have to sign her name. He didn’t show and so that is how I ended up with her name,” Hutson recalled.
He assured that his father lived up to his role as the head of the home. “He did carpentry and joinery and he took care of all 10 of us children…he really took control of everything,” Hutson recounted.
As the eldest and only son of his parents’ union, Hutson said that when he became old enough he even started to contemplate carrying on his father’s name, but “I didn’t bother with that. I think if I did I would have done my mother a great injustice, because I carried her name for so many years and all of a sudden when I became exposed to learning I wanted to change it, so I decided to leave it.”

FOUNDATION
Reminiscing on his schooling days, Hutson said, “school life for me was very interesting. I didn’t come from a background of scholars or people of repute, but I can tell you now that the family has since been transformed in terms of the things that we never had.”
This, Hutson recalled, was owing to the fact that his parents, particularly his father, wanted to see him be exposed to an elevated level of education.
“I think I was the very first to go to university for my family, to the extent that my elder brothers [his mother’s children] started to look up to me to make decisions for the family even though they were older…. this was because they perceived me to be smart,” recalled a smiling Hutson.
It might have been because of this very perception that the treatment meted out to Hutson from his father was a tad biased. “I got everything, I got books, I got gears and everything I needed to go to school. I always looked good to go to school,” recounted a smiling Hutson.

He attended the East La Penitence Primary School after which he moved on to Christ Church Secondary. But after completing secondary school, Hutson had his heart set on delving into studies to become a doctor. His father, however, envisaged him becoming a lawyer instead. “He said to me one day, ‘you are going to be a lawyer, you should join the teaching profession’,” Hutson remembered.
However, immediately out of school Hutson got an opportunity to undertake a work study stint at a medical laboratory. After completing that programme the company decided to retain Hutson, which saw him working in that field for two additional years.
Nevertheless, he adhered to his father’s advice and sent out applications, to among other places, the Cyril Potter College of Education [CPCE] to be trained as a teacher. “I sent out a lot of applications, I even sent out applications to the University of Guyana [UG] because I still wanted to do Medical Technology,” Hutson recalled.

HIGHER LEARNING
As fate would have it, his first positive response would come from CPCE which saw him commencing his training as a teacher. Upon completion of his teacher training, Hutson wasted no time in furthering his studies. He went on to UG where he completed a degree in Sociology and then a Post Graduate Diploma in Education Administration, which added considerably to his qualifications.
He soon after became eligible for a scholarship from government and was able to pursue a Master’s in Education Planning, Management and Supervision.
“In between that I did a number of other courses…I went to China did a course in Civic and Distance Education too. I never seemed to stop studying,” said Hutson, who is even today currently continuing on his journey for higher learning via the Bakke Graduate University. He is currently reading for a Doctorate in Transformational Leadership which he anticipates can only help to improve the person that he has become.
TAKING CHARGE

His pursuit for knowledge at this point of his life comes even as he shoulders the challenge of being the country’s CEO. “I think the mind is a powerful thing; when you make up your mind you can do almost anything,” said a rather relaxed Hutson even as he considered the many challenges in the education sector.
But even before ascending to the helm of the education system, Hutson held a number of positions within the Ministry of Education. After becoming a trained teacher, he was given the privilege of teaching at the very primary school where he was taught [East La Penitence] and, according to Hutson, “I had a good understanding of the people there, the issues that they faced, and I really worked hard to help some of the boys especially, to be successful.”
It was at this very juncture that he recognized that “teaching is not a job that should be taken lightly. If you are serious about being a teacher, you will find that some people will even want to fight you, but at the end of the day you have to be focused.”
He recalled being tasked with the duty of even being a father figure to many of his students over the years. His main aim as a teacher was also to ensure that those in his charge had the aptitude to read and write. This was particularly important to Hutson since he had long recognized that “if you are illiterate, you really can’t make any progress in life.”
He continued with the same conviction at the St John’s College as a secondary level teacher. But Hutson wasn’t only focused on the elevation of his students. He spoke of helping to train teachers who hadn’t the level of qualification to enter CPCE. This he was able to do through an initiative called the Teacher Foundation Programme.
“There were many teachers who hadn’t any qualification to really get into CPCE…I can tell you now, many of those persons are trained teachers, Head Teachers, Deputy Head Teachers; they have very strategic positions coming from a state of nothingness,” Hutson shared.
THE JOURNEY TO THE TOP
Although he hadn’t caressed the idea of one day becoming CEO, Hutson’s preparation for that portfolio started many years ago when he was appointed District Education Officer [DEO]. By this time, he had tied the knot with his sweetheart, Deborah – a District Education Officer, with whom he has a son – nine-year-old Yeshua.
But his appointment as DEO saw him being forced to move away from his wife, and indeed that was a difficult sacrifice, since throughout his life he was accustomed to being around family.
“I never really knew how to not live around family, it was something I struggled with…the first time I left, tears came to my eyes,” Hutson confided. Nevertheless, he had to adapt and was able to spend two years independently in Region Two, carrying out his duties as DEO, which included supervising schools in the various Creeks.
This meant long hours of travel by boat, at times along rivers with creatures he never grew accustomed to seeing.
“As you travel you would see the big black caimans with their red eyes above the water, giant otters playing around, electric eels and of course snakes. I don’t know if some of them were dangerous or not, but I remembered one time the boat captain saying to me ‘DEO must look up for snakes’ because they can fall [from trees] into the boat. All of those things you had to endure for the sake of education delivery,” Hutson reminisced.
The daunting experience saw him yearning for the weekends to return home to his wife.
Hutson was later promoted to the position of Regional Education Officer [REdO] and this saw him moving to Linden, Region 10.
“That was better because of the proximity to home. You see when I was in Essequibo, by 6 o’ clock everything shuts down, there is no speedboat and you can’t go home even if you wanted to. But in Linden if you wanted to catch a bus and come down and return you could do that.”
From Linden it was back to Georgetown for Hutson where he took up an appointment as Principal Education Officer [PEO]. But working in Georgetown was certainly not a bed of roses for Hutson. He recalled the saying in education being, “if you can work in Georgetown and Linden, you can work anywhere in education.” This was due to what he described as the “litany of issues and people that you have to deal with, and of course you can’t hide from the media.”
But upon his arrival as PEO in Georgetown, Hutson disclosed, “I think that we were really able to pull Georgetown around.”
Two years later he was promoted to the position of Assistant Chief Education Officer [Primary] and was able to introduce a plan to help transform literacy in the education system. That programme, Hutson said, noticeably helped to improve the performance at the National Grade Six Assessment.
He then became the Deputy CEO and shortly after was appointed CEO. But according to Hutson, “this is the ultimate challenge…every day you go home and lie down to sleep, all you are thinking about is education. You are thinking about what is going to happen next, good or bad. All I am thinking about is what plan I should implement to change the status quo…it is all a fight for our children.”
MAKING CHANGES
But Hutson is clever enough to know that the needed transformation in the education system is not a solo task. He disclosed that “we are a far way off from where we want to go and what we want to do; transformation calls for team effort.”
There have, however, been some successes in education since Hutson became CEO, and according to him, “What I admire most about our success so far is the support and the collaboration that has been taking place but we still have to get some people to buy in to the vision and work assiduously to achieve the vision.”
Although achieving the goal sometimes entails him taking a tough stance, Hutson assured that “everything is done in love and most importantly with the children in mind.”
“I think that is why we are here, in these positions, to see our children fulfill their potential and live purpose-driven lives; to see transformation. It hurts me when I see children who can’t read and write; some of them can’t even speak properly. My view is if the children can’t read first then they can’t do anything else, not even mathematics. They will not be able to understand concepts, so we have to work towards a transformation,” Hutson asserted.
Even as he continues his quest to realize a transformation in the education system, today we at Kaieteur New bestow upon CEO Hutson, the title of ‘Special Person’.

---

---