Dear Editor,
The Minister of Education recently tacitly admitted, while confirming our worst fears, that the state of education in Guyana is way beyond critical or being in desperate straits.
We thank and commend her for this candid disclosure.
My recent visit to Region 9 has disclosed appalling pass rates of less than
30% at CAPE at two of the three secondary schools in the Region with the third one scoring a mere 47%.
The above figures do not disclose the real regional horror in education which is revealed by the number of young people who do not even make it to secondary school. In the village of Baitoon only one child from the primary school passed Grade Six so as to enable the student to attend a secondary school.
I am sure that the Region is not alone with these statistics.
Perhaps it is time for all political parties to agree that there are certain aspects of our national development which are too critical to Guyana’s future to have them subject to political competition.
Education is one of them as are health and security.
My humble proposal is that education be left to a team of experts in the field to develop a fifteen year plan for education in Guyana.
This panel of only experts (no politicians) will be given a specified time within which to develop the plan with agreed long term goals in education.
These goals must be beyond mere literacy but should envision a new Guyana, bilingual and technologically competitive.
The plan will be endorsed by all the parliamentary parties who will sign a public declaration that they will not make education the subject of political competition or election campaigns.
The political parties should further agree that whoever occupies the seat of Minister of Education in any Government, should always be an appropriately qualified technocrat.
The recommendations and modifications to the plan can be submitted to the panel from time to time for review and modification.
Yours faithfully,
C.A. Nigel Hughes
