Dear Editor,
Information flowing from a government to its people is not a luxury and privilege enjoyed by those people. It is the government’s duty to impart and the people’s right to receive information. Indeed, if this time-honoured truth could be followed, a nation could spend its time sensibly discussing issues and ideas that would advance the people rather than fighting to have this basic good governance measure followed.
On the 28th of October, 2015, the Chief Education Officer of Guyana sent out a circular where he, on behalf of the Ministry of Education, declared, inter alia, that the Grades Two and Four assessments would no longer be weighted nor form part of the marks for Grade Six assessment as before, and that the said circular was to have immediate effect.
While there were mumblings prior to the circular being sent out, about the possibility of this happening, up to today’s date nobody from the ministry, not the CEO himself, nor any of the two highly paid Ministers, not the several new advisers nor the newly acquired public relations consultants, has bothered with honouring their duty to tell the nation of this major change to our education system.
Not surprisingly the people of our country are confused about, and desperate to know, what precisely the circular means and whether its contents are best for our country. I am bombarded with such questions.
Sadly, I am without answers as the circular itself is unclear. Further, I was not consulted nor even told about this big change neither as a citizen of Guyana and mother of children of relevant ages, nor as Shadow Minister of Education in the National Assembly.
Parents, children and teachers alike would like to know whether those current Grades Five and Six students who already wrote both assessments, which were already marked and weighted, would still have their grades considered at the next two Grade Six assessments or are their efforts to be abandoned and their grades, already earned, to be discarded?
I would like to know what new measures are being put in place to ensure the grades that will emerge from the new unweighted assessments will actually be used diagnostically to guide the interventions going forward for each child, thus giving meaning to the reason for assessments in the first place.
I should not have had to ask these questions in the first place as good governance demands that the nation be consulted on and informed fully of major policy changes in any sector.
However, having been forced to ask, I would have preferred, Editor, to raise these issues from the floor of National Assembly so that the people who have asked me for answers could hear those answers. Unfortunately with the government’s efforts to dodge the debate on the motion to annul the salary increases with which they have rewarded themselves, the National Assembly has been indefinitely postponed. I am therefore left with no place else but your columns to plead with the Ministers to do their duty and let the nation know what this circular really means for the parents, children and teachers whom it will directly and immediately affect.
Yours faithfully,
Priya Manickchand
