Education is in a deep crisis

Jul 10, 2023 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Peeping tom…

Kaieteur News – We hear a lot about ‘transformation’ – almost every development these days in Guyana is said to be part of a process of transformation. Even in the education sector, we hear about the building of schools contributing to the transformation of learning.

Yet, the reality within the education sector is that progress has been slothful and incremental at best, with gains often followed by remissions. This year has been no exception. The 2023 National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA) results have again been presented as leading to some marginal improvements in some subject areas but a decline in Social Studies.

Each year, there is a ceremony hosted to announce the top-performers at the NGSA. But each year, the announcement of these results obscures the crisis which exists in public education, a crisis that goes beyond performance at the NGSA.

To date, we are yet to learn just what percentage of students failed to score 50% of more overall – in other words what percentage of students failed the examinations. What we do know for sure is that there still remains a considerable gap in performance between students in the hinterland and those in the rest of the country.

But this year, we have been regaled with a most interesting explanation for this development. We have been told that the hinterland has the lowest number of trained teachers. As such, it has been concluded that there is a correlation between the percentage of trained teachers and the underperformance of hinterland students.

Correlation, however, is not causation. It is highly improbable that the low number of trained teachers alone has contributed to hinterland students underperforming at the NGSA.

If problems with trained teachers are correlated to the underperformance of hinterland students, then the government ought to be less enthusiastic about the building of secondary schools in hinterland areas. Just recently, the government was hyping its plans for the construction of the first ever secondary school at Kwebanna in Region 1.

The government ought to be ashamed that it has taken so many years for this area to have a secondary school. But what is the use of having a secondary school in this area, equipped with laboratories and dormitories, if there is only a limited number of trained teachers to educate the students.

Previous interventions made by the Ministry of Education to address the underperformance of hinterland education were more focused on other factors.  There therefore seems to be disjoint between the emphasis in the government’s interventions and the need to ensure more trained hinterland teachers.

For example, the government in collaboration with the Inter-American Development Bank has developed a Support for Educational Recovery and Transformation Project. That project has 3 components that are concerned first with building new schools (infrastructure); second, providing essential services to these schools such as electricity, connectivity and water; and the third component is about improving the Ministry of Education’s data management systems. This US$43M project has a greater focus on stemming overcrowding in hinterland schools, rather than increasing the number of trained hinterland teachers.

One of the objectives of the Education Sector Plan 2021-2025 is to reduce inequities in education. That plan had noted that more than 50% of students do not pass the NGSA.  But that Plan had also confessed that Guyana has been unable to do an in-depth analysis of the factors which affect students’ performance. It appears however that such an analysis has now been done and that the principal factor is teacher training. How else would the Ministry be claiming a correlation between teacher training and hinterland performance?

To its credit, the Ministry has however been emphasizing efforts at improving the training of hinterland teachers. And it has also announced plans to try to attract greater numbers of trained teachers in the system. But this is a case of too little and much too late.

The government needs to cease an approach that has yielded at best intermittent incremental improvements in educational performance. This approach is hampering education in the entire country, not only in the hinterland.

It may have escaped the notice of the Minister that of the top 1% of students at the 2023 NGSA, the number of places assigned to students who received education at private schools. This represents a vote of no-confidence in the public education system and should be a source of concern for the Minister.

The time has come for a declaration of a state of emergency in public education. Unless this happens all that will occur is that each year, we will hear announcements of incremental improvements followed the next year by slippages. Nothing would change and what we would have developed is a system in which those who can afford private education would do well while those who cannot would have to subsist on a substandard education.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of Kaieteur News.

 

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