Education is the one area above all others where there should be no political wrangling; after all, the issues which have to be confronted in relation to it are purely technical or professional in character, not political. Furthermore, education is too important to be made into a political football, since it is the bedrock on which development is founded.
That after nearly twenty-two years we haven’t made the kind of progress we should have on the education front, is not because the PPP/C government hasn’t poured money in; this year’s budget earmarked $32.3B for the start of a four-year Education Strategy Plan, for example. Clearly, however, the government is missing something. Having said that, it is worth pointing out that the education system did not begin its decline under the current administration; that happened under the Forbes Burnham government, and a fairly precipitous decline it was too. Anyone who harbours rosy memories about the state of education during the PNC years is talking nonsense.
This is not to say that that is what Mr Burnham intended; quite the contrary in fact. It is simply to observe that the economy at the time did not generate the requisite funds to provide free school textbooks for everyone, in addition to ending dual control and providing free education throughout the system. Neither, it might be added, did the Ministry of Education have the bureaucratic structures in place to deliver on all this, as a consequence of which there was considerable muddle in some areas, book distribution being a case in point. As the years progressed, the situation deteriorated as the budget available for education – no less than for all the other sectors – shrank rapidly.
Further unnecessary confusion was imported into the educational sphere by the sudden decision to integrate the schools – another financial burden, among other problems – and far more important, the inexplicable edict to nationalize the importation of books, which effectively closed the bookshops. In a television-free society where reading was one of the pastimes of ordinary people, and bookstalls and loan libraries for popular paperbacks flourished in the local markets, this had a disastrous secondary impact on education from which this society has never recovered.
Arguably, Burnham’s worst legacy has turned out to be the de-professionalizing of the teachers, some of whom might have stayed on rather longer had they retained their status, despite the fact that the real value of the salaries they received had diminished dramatically. The first to go were the male teachers – probably mostly for financial reasons initially. (In 1987, for example, Stabroek News had carried an interview with one of them who was driving a minibus because he could not support his family on what he earned. An interview several years later with another had highlighted the fact that the few men who stayed in the profession had some other source of income to sustain them – in this case, a business.)
The loss of a large proportion of male teachers was accompanied by the resignation of many of the best female teachers, who often went to the West Indian islands. When Desmond Hoyte acceded to the presidency, nothing much could be done about education because the money was not available, and his Minister of Education, the late Deryck Bernard, did acknowledge privately that the major problem in the system was that they could not pay the teachers enough. (A primary education project began towards the end of the Hoyte era.)
It is a problem which continues, and which the PPP/C administration that succeeded Hoyte has never come to terms with. It might be remarked that many of those countries which score highly in the international education league tables, pay their teachers extremely well; they regard teaching as a profession which is critical. This present government has certainly recognized that quality teaching in the classroom is not at the level it should be, but its solution from the beginning has been the in-service training of teachers of one kind or another and the upgrading of teacher training institutions. The latter is undoubtedly important, and the former is better than nothing, but as has been said in these columns before, remedial training in adulthood will not make good deficiencies experienced in the early stages of the educational process. (It might be remarked too in passing that unless lecturers at UG are paid realistic salaries – in addition to all the other things which need to be done there – there is little hope that it will be able to function as a true university.)
So here we are with another budget, another strategic plan and no indication that there is any intention to deal with the teacher problematic, in order to attract some real talent back into the classroom. There is the option of technology for teaching purposes, but giving access to that to every child throughout the school day would require an enormous investment which the government is unlikely to be able to fulfil at this stage.
The new Strategic Plan, Minister Singh told the National Assembly on Monday, includes such worthy causes as improving literacy rates, but this, it might be noted, is without knowing what the literacy rates really are in this country. The last literacy survey was undertaken privately, perhaps as long as two decades ago, and its depressing results were studiously ignored by the Ministry of Education at the time. No government in this country should have anything to fear from facing reality, because all of them – with the best will in the world – have made their own contributions to our educational decline, and no political party in this area is in a position to point a finger at the other. The plan therefore should have included a literacy survey (not just among children) so the ministry has a far more precise idea about the extent of the problem and where it is best advised to concentrate its resources.
Dr Singh spoke smugly of achieving universal primary education, but those who travel around the country are less confident that all the children who should be in primary school, are in fact there, particularly in hinterland and some rural areas. The government is moving, of course, towards universal secondary education, a laudable aim in itself, but while large sums have been earmarked for new secondary schools, one cannot help but wonder where all the extra subject teachers are going to come from, since training in education methodology which is normally what is provided is not the first requirement for such schools.
It is true that the PPP/C government has to run an education system in the context of a more complicated social environment than was the case under the PNC, but that aside, one wonders what got into the Finance Minister’s head to decide to allocate $2B to giving parents $10,000 this year if they have a child in school. The school feeding programme and the uniform programme are in an entirely different category and are important, but what will this $10,000 hand-out achieve, more particularly as no means test is to be applied? Former President Cardoso of Brazil introduced a programme to pay poor mothers a regular sum if they sent their children to school, and it has been continued by his successors. It has been credited with making a huge impact on poverty in Brazil, but these are continuous payments over an extended period. One cannot help but feel that this $2B might have been better spent on a literacy survey, for example, or some project with longer term objectives.
The space between the political parties is full of vitriol at the moment, and when the budget debate opens one can expect the usual dose of rhetoric cum invective. Of all the sectors, however, which should not be discussed in an atmosphere where vituperation is paramount, it is education.
