The Budget debates have become an extension of the Thursday Press Conferences

Jan 24, 2024 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – The things that I remember the most about school is not so much about the education, but the things we did during school hours: the friends made, the games we played, the fun we had, and especially the extra curricula activities.

Schools in those days helped to shape a round character. You learnt in the classroom and you acquired skills in the ball field and the clubs and activities outside of the classroom.

Today, the standard of education has fallen so much that students have little time to participate in the religious societies, choirs and clubs in schools. They are forced to attend extra-lessons to compensate for the deficits in the delivery of education. No time is available to learn to play the violin, or piano or even the steel pan.

Education is now about drilling facts into the heads of our children. Students are being prepared almost exclusively to pass examinations rather than becoming rounded individuals.

It is against this background that the present Budget debates on the education system are so shocking. Instead of addressing what it will doing to improve the quality of education and allowing children more time to become rounded individuals, the government is castigating the Opposition for not have allegedly, done anything in the education sector over the period 2015 and 2020.

The government should not find any comfort in claiming that secondary school access was 78% in 2014 and was at the same level when the PPPC returned to office in 2020. It should ask itself why after all the investments in education between 1992 and 2014, could universal secondary education not be guaranteed.

Massive sums were expended on education during these 22 years. It is an indictment against the PPPC government that for 22 years, more than one in every five students of secondary school age were deprived of a secondary education.

The government is now claiming that it is building schools, something that it is said was not done under the APNU+AFC. But this is not entirely true. The focus of the APNU+AFC was on expanding facilities at existing schools. For example, the Bashaizon Primary was commissioned in January 2020. This was an annex to Achawib Primary. Extensions were also done to three schools in Region 2. Zeeburg Secondary School was opened in 2016 (the contract was signed under the PPPC) and Haiwa Nursery school was constructed in 2017. Bot quite a lot of work was also done on rebuilding and maintaining schools.

There is a reason why, however, the PPP is so obsessed with building new schools. It is because it has a poor track record of maintaining existing schools. If the PPPC had been allocating more monies to maintenance there would have been no need for having to close schools as the Brickdam Secondary School and the Arthurville Primary School in Wakenaam.

The government believes that building new schools translates to increasing access. But one of the problems plaguing the education system is a high dropout rate of students. The Ministry of Education has admitted in its Education Sector Plan 2021-2025 to problems with the completion rate for secondary education and high dropout rates.

This is one of the reasons why the David Granger administration made certain interventions. Recognizing that many parents could not afford the cost of transportation to send their children to school, a programme was launched to provide free transportation by buses.

But when the small-minded PPPC came into office it downgraded this initiative. It is believed it did so because it was an APNU+AFC initiative. But it should have considered its own numbers, which showed a shockingly high number of secondary schools students not completing up to the last grade.

There are serious problems to be fixed within the school system. These problems are not going to be fixed simply by building new schools. A broader approach is needed including ensuring that children can get to school.

The ‘Because We Care’ one-off annual cash grant is not going to solve the transportation woes of children.  Building new schools is also not going to address the serious deficiencies which result in more than half of the secondary school graduates failing to gain five or more subjects at the school leaving examinations.

This is why the exchanges in the Budget debates – which is like an extended episode of the PPP’s Thursday Press Conferences – focusing on who did what and who did not do what, are not helpful in finding a solution to the crisis in education. It is time for a more matured and less cantankerous debate in the National Assembly, especially when it concerns education

The government now has the money to do what Granger could not afford to do. Provide free transportation to all school children in Guyana and to spend more money on maintenance of schools so as to avoid having to rebuilding them every few years.

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

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• budget, debates, extension, Peeping Tom, press conferences

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