Palliatives will not work

Sep 02, 2024 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Peeping tom…

Kaieteur News – The Ministry of Education has opted for a predictable response to a crisis of its own making. It has decided to double down on the existing strategy, yet more vigorously.

The dismal decline in the pass rates for Mathematics at the CSEC examinations from 34% in 2023 to 31% this year in Guyana, and a broader regional slide from 43% to 35%, screams for a radical rethinking of educational policy.

The numbers don’t lie: Guyana is facing a severe crisis in education, evidenced by the fact that two out of every three students sitting for the CSEC examinations are failing to matriculate. This alarming statistics not only highlights the dire state of our educational system but also raises significant concerns about the broader social and economic implications. Could this pervasive academic underachievement be a key factor explaining why youth unemployment has remained stubbornly high for many years?

A failure to matriculate means that a vast majority of our young people are entering the job market without the necessary qualifications or skills, making it difficult for them to secure stable employment or pursue higher education. This, in turn, perpetuates a cycle of poverty and disenfranchisement, undermining the country’s efforts to build a skilled workforce and develop a thriving economy. If we are to tackle youth unemployment effectively, addressing the root causes of this educational crisis must become an urgent priority.

The poor rate of Mathematics passes is not only a barrier to employment opportunities for our youth but also significantly limits the pool of candidates eligible to enter the teaching profession. With a large majority of students failing to matriculate in Mathematics, the number of individuals who can qualify to teach this critical subject diminishes.

Yet, the Ministry, like a fiddling Nero, seems content to pour gasoline on a blazing fire, prescribing an additional dollop of instructional hours as the magic potion to arrest this alarming trend. Let us be clear: the imposition of four hours minimum of Mathematics each week, scheduled in the hallowed hours of the morning when young minds are presumably at their zenith, is an empty gesture. It ignores the inconvenient truth that a rot in mathematical education begins long before entrance to secondary schools.

The National Grade Six Assessment results, with a mere four out of every ten students passing Mathematics, unearth a foundational flaw. What future, pray tell, can a child have in secondary mathematics if their primary education has been neglected? It is tantamount to expecting a house built on sand to withstand a hurricane.

The Ministry’s measures, laser-focused on secondary education, miss the glaring reality that our secondary schools are inundated with students whose mathematical foundation is more quicksand than bedrock. Such students stumble into secondary schools unequipped, and rather than the system providing a ladder out of the mire, it seems intent on digging a deeper pit.

Secondary schools are not designed to compensate for the deficiencies born of inadequate primary education. And yet that is precisely what is expected.

The Ministry’s strategy fails to grapple with the stark question of teacher competence. To paraphrase, no army can win a battle if it is armed only with blunt swords and fatigued soldiers. If teachers, themselves, are under-trained or ill-qualified, no amount of instructional hours will compensate for their lack of expertise.

A teacher with only a CSEC pass in Mathematics is ill-suited to the task of guiding students through the rigors of CSEC exams. The Ministry ought to be asking itself how many of its educators hold qualifications beyond the very level they are tasked with teaching. If our teachers lack the requisite CAPE-level understanding of Mathematics, they have been set up to fail, and by extension, so have our students.

What is needed is not a knee-jerk reaction, but a thoughtful, comprehensive study into the origins of this malaise. We must unearth whether the crux of the issue lies in the primary schooling system, the quality of teacher training, or an attitude towards the subject. Only with a diagnosis as precise as a surgeon’s scalpel can we prescribe the correct remedy. Throwing more hours at the problem, without ensuring that those hours are filled with quality teaching, is akin to putting a band-aid on a bullet wound.

The Ministry of Education must cease its tinkering around the edges and face the grim reality: our education sector is in crisis, and only a systemic overhaul, grounded in empirical understanding, will salvage it. The time for palliatives has passed; now is the hour for a revolution in thought and action, lest we condemn yet another generation to mathematical mediocrity. (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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