Reporting last week on the performance of the education sector in 2007 Minister of Education Shaik Baksh acknowledged that the literacy level is declining across the country. This is not news to anyone who has even perfunctory dealings with the school system, but at least the Minister is prepared to be open about the problem, rather than attempt to do what some sectors do, and pretend either that difficulties don’t exist, or are well on the way to being eliminated. The first step to finding possible answers to any problem, is to admit that it exists in the first place.
At the bottom of all educational achievement is literacy. If a pupil leaves school without being able to read and write, then he or she has very limited options in the world. Education is a cumulative process, and if the first crucial steps are never achieved, then it doesn’t matter how long a student remains in school, it would have been a wasted exercise. And too many of our schools – some primary tops and community high schools come immediately to mind – are effectively nothing more than child-minding institutions; serious instruction and learning do not go on in them.
Being able to read and write is every child’s right; we pour so much money into education in a general sense, that it is nothing short of a national scandal that we are churning out large numbers of teenagers who after spending a decade or more in a formal learning situation, can’t fill out a form, can’t apply for a job in writing and can’t read the voters’ register. This is not a political issue. It doesn’t matter two hoots how we got to this point, or who has done more than the other to try and put things right; all of that is irrelevant. What we have here is a national problem whose origins are complex.
Not only is being able to read every child’s right, according to specialists in the field, every child (with very few exceptions) has the capacity to learn to read. As a matter of fact, we don’t need the experts to tell us that; from practical experience we discovered it ourselves in years gone by, when this country (genuinely) used to boast some of the highest literacy rates in the world. So, if we accept that children are entitled to learn to read, are able to learn to read and need to learn to read, then it is high time that we made literacy a national priority and attempted to mobilize all the human and other resources available in the society to tackle the issue. It does not mean, of course, that the main onus for action would not fall on the Ministry of Education; however, if the ministry is committed – and there is no reason to believe it is not – it can reasonably work with other groups in the society on erasing illiteracy from our communities.
This is not to suggest that serious efforts have not already been made to raise levels of literacy – and numeracy too – with such projects as BEAMS, or that these have not had successes; it is simply to say that all of that notwithstanding, we still have a major problem. A distinction has to be made, of course, between those entering school for the first time, and those further along in the system, particularly if they have reached the secondary school stage. There is also the question of illiterate adults, since we now have members of more than one generation who are functionally illiterate.
Where the beginners are concerned, perhaps the ministry could look again at methods of teaching reading in the light of the dramatic results coming out of a pilot scheme in the schools of Clackmannanshire, Scotland, using something called synthetic phonics. Without going into the details, suffice it to say that it provides the building blocks for children to recognize and put together words. What the researchers discovered was that not only did this method provide a level playing field for children, since it erased the inherent advantage pupils from affluent and educated homes have with other reading methods, but it also appealed to boys. This was a result they were not expecting, since boys normally are much slower than girls in learning to read, but using synthetic phonics this was no longer the case. It is thought that not only did the method have more appeal for boys’ minds, but they also liked the physical action of building words by placing letters on a magnetic board. Furthermore, the authorities in Clackmannanshire also used synthetic phonics for remedial teaching at more advanced levels, and one of the supervisors of the programme last year said in an interview that they now only had three students in the school system who had not learned to read and write.
This success inspired some schools in Wales and later in England to experiment with synthetic phonics, although the results from these are not fully in. However, the central educational authorities are sufficiently impressed with synthetic phonics to introduce it as the method of choice for teaching reading in the English school system. Like Guyana, England and Wales traditionally have been using mixed methods for learning to read, and it must be said that not everyone is happy about the change to synthetic phonics, arguing that the Clackmannanshire study is too small to draw any conclusions.
While it will take time before we learn the outcome of the English changes, there is no reason why we could not undertake a small pilot project ourselves in one or two selected schools, first with children entering primary school for the first time, and then with much older pupils requiring remedial work. If the results are promising (and there is no guarantee they will be), then the ministry could give consideration to having our teacher training institutions instruct their students in how to teach reading using synthetic phonics; hold workshops for those teachers already in the system, and extend the use of the method to other schools. Given the current situation, it has nothing to lose by at least attempting a pilot.
Which brings us to the next issue: money. The government has to be prepared to throw a great deal more money at the problem of illiteracy than has been the case hitherto. If dealing with the problem is a national priority, it has by definition to be an educational priority taking precedence over everything else, at least for a limited time period. For example, as things stand there is only one officer in the ministry dealing with literacy at the primary level (there is also one for the nursery school level), and she has responsibility for all the regions. Given the number of primary schools in this country, it is simply an impossible remit for one person. The ministry needs a department of persons to cover the schools, give instruction and support to teachers on an ongoing basis where appropriate, and do what is presumably done now, namely monitor what is going on in schools and report on where the gaps are, etc.
A major difficulty, of course, will be in the area of remedial work, which will require far more resources both monetary and human allocated to it than is the case at present. The Minister did say that a programme was planned to target adults at the community level, although he did not elaborate on the details. Perhaps it is in this area especially that the ministry could work with civic groups.
But the biggest challenge of all the Minister faces of course, is teachers. Without competent teachers in the schools, there will be slow progress. Mr Baksh also complained about the commitment of some teachers, and given that, it is unlikely that his proposals to extend classes in the afternoons and on weekends and holidays will produce all the results he is hoping for. While his point about teachers’ commitment is well taken, it should also be recognized that there is a demoralized and underpaid teaching force in the education system. Unless the government can make its peace with the IMF about finding some way of remunerating the teachers substantially better so that those who have left teaching might be tempted back, making an impact on functional illiteracy in this society will be a very
uphill task.
