Education and the Decade of Development

Nov 03, 2019 APNU Column, Features / Columnists

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(Excerpt from an address by HE David Granger on the occasion of the 175thanniversaryof Queen’s College 2019.10.29)

Guyana is on the threshold of a transformational stage of development. The country which you will enter as educated citizens in the next five or six years will be different from the one into which your parents and grandparents were born fifty or sixty years ago.
Guyana plans to become a more ‘genial state’ in which everyone would enjoy a good quality of life. It will expend the expected revenue from petroleum production to eliminate extreme poverty and inequality, enhance economic growth, extend public infrastructure and deliver better public services, especially public education, to the population.
Guyana plans to become, also, a ‘green state,’ in which emphasis will be placed on the protection of the environment, the preservation of its biodiversity, the promotion of the generation of energy from renewable sources and the adoption of practical measures to ensure climate adaptation.
Guyana plans to become, also, a ‘digital state’ by placing increased emphasis on information communications technology. It aims at connecting every household, neighbourhood, community, municipality, region and government agency and will integrate the country, more completely, with the Caribbean and the rest of the world.
Science and technology education
Education is at the heart of the Government’s plan to prepare succeeding generations for these transformational changes, to ensure that College graduates enjoy the best opportunities available and to develop an internationally competitive economy.
Guyana is not an island unto itself. It must compete with other countries in a constantly changing and rapidly developing world to sell its products and to seek investments.
Science and technology are at the centre of those changes. Studies suggest that the rate of automation will continue to increase by 2030 [such as the Mc Kinsey Global Institute’s December 2017 study on job transitions in the workplace].These studies point to an increasing need for engineers, information technology specialists and other scientists to drive economic growth.
The world is experiencing its fourth industrial revolution. The first witnessed the use of water and steam energy to mechanize production; the second involved the acceleration of production through the use of electricity; the third witnessed the widespread diffusion of digital and electronic technology; and the fourth is witnessing the wider, deeper and speedier integration of technologies – physical, biological and informational.
Many small states, including Guyana, are faced, still, with the challenge of the third industrial revolution of reducing the digital divide and of advancing into the fourth industrial age. Guyana must not be enfeebled or handicapped. It must move ahead or be left behind.
Science and technology education is essential to mastering the skills needed for establishing knowledge-based industries and for modernization. There is good reason to continue to emphasize this form of education which is:
 essential to acquiring the skills necessary for social, economic and industrial transformation and which will play a more transformative role in making Guyana internationally competitive;
 fundamental to scientific innovation and will allow for the development of a more technologically competent workforce which is needed for making Guyana internationally competitive.
Science education played a historically functional, rather than transformational, role in this country’s economy. It did produce doctors, engineers and other scientists many of whom went off work primarily in society, including in the bauxite, timber and sugar industries.
Those industries, owned largely by foreign trans-national corporations, for decades, were extractive enclaves with little value-added production and were not necessarily transformative for the economy. Their production was geared towards meeting the demands of metropolitan markets rather than fulfilling the needs of national development.
A robust, local, industrial sector did not emerge in the shadow of these traditional sectors and the country was not able to recruit and employ the human resources needed for new industries such as petroleum.
Many educated scientists were employed in the Public Service in Government ministries, especially in Agriculture, Public Health and Public Infrastructure rather than in emerging industries. Such employment was necessary, but not sufficient, to ensure economic growth.
Guyana will need new skills to populate occupations in the ‘green environment’, ‘petroleum-producing’ and ‘digital’ emerging economic sectors in the evolving state.
It will need an ‘A-to-Z’ corps of scientists – from agronomists, architects, biologists, botanists, chemists, doctors, engineers, environmentalists, geneticists, geologists, hydrologists, information systems specialists, and physicists to zoologists – for transformational national development.
Decade of Development
Guyana plans to launch a ‘Decade of development’ next year during which education will be accorded the highest priority. The national University will be developed into a world-class, tertiary educational institution, offering the finest science and technology education.
I have announced that free university education, in accordance with the Constitution, will be restored. No qualified Guyanese student will be required to pay for education at our public university.
The ‘Decade’ will emphasize science and technology education in every secondary school. This emphasis, however, will not diminish attention to the humanities and social sciences; the country will continue to need accountants, attorneys, bankers, economists, linguists and managers.
The ‘Decade’ will place higher priority on creating a corps of science scholars who will become the future captains of the country’s industries. It will focus on promoting the essential elements – four ‘Is’ – of science and technology education:
– Infrastructure: Every secondary school will be equipped with laboratories to advance science and technology education; smart classrooms will be installed to allow students to benefit from modern pedagogies and every secondary school will be connected to the internet and have access to e-libraries; the laboratories at the Cyril Potter College of Education have been modernized to improve teachers’ competence in the delivery of science and technology education.

– Investment: School administrators will be provided with increased budgets to allow them to employ qualified staff and to procure services and materials which are necessary for proper science instruction, for the replacement of equipment and for the maintenance of science and technology laboratories. Government will offer incentives by providing scholarships to encourage excellence in science and technology;

– Institutions: Science and technology education is to be institutionalized more extensively, countrywide; it will be driven throughout the public education system by a strong and capable Department of Science and Technology.

– Information Communications Technology: Information communications technology will be the means through which the country will become more fully interconnected and integrated; ICT education is essential to equipping and preparing students for the knowledge-based industries of the present and future.

ICT development will transform the economy. It will to add value to our service sectors, diversify the economy away from overdependence on primary production, move manufacturing up the value chain and tap into larger external markets.
The ‘Decade of Development’ will introduce transformative changes in education, particularly in science education. These changes will enhance schools’ scientific infrastructure – classrooms, and laboratories; increase resources available to schools’ administrators and improve opportunities for science and technology education for students and teachers.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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