Last Friday, teachers of the Brickdam Secondary School staged a sit-out in protest over the deplorable condition of the building they were occupying, and on Tuesday, less than a week later, the Ministry of Education arbitrarily closed the school, scattering its teachers and students to other schools in the city. This is a complete knee-jerk reaction to what has been a longstanding issue. Not only that, it is ill-timed, coming so close to the end of the term and school year, and is bound to affect end-of-term exam scores.
The school, a narrow building running from Brickdam to Hadfield Street, is dwarfed by its close neighbour, the imposing Business School (a privately run secondary institution). It was always a small school in terms of numbers, because of the size of its building with minimal recreation area for students.
During the sit-out, it was revealed by teachers that the building was housing over 300 students—clearly its intake numbers had been drastically increased over the years. What’s more, teachers said that the building had been dogged by infrastructural and other problems since 1995 and that in 2012, it was deemed unfit by the Guyana Fire Service.
The teachers sit-out on Friday quickly garnered public and media attention and before long, Chief Education Officer Olato Sam was on the scene exhorting the teachers to, “Go back to your classes and go teach the people children that you’re being paid to teach and we will address your concerns.” He further told the teachers that Friday was the first time he was hearing their complaints; that no one at the ministry had heard their complaints and that they should organize themselves and make representation to the ministry.
Sam’s response really ought to be awarded pride of place in the annals of disingenuity. For one thing, this school is located on Brickdam – a stone’s throw from the Ministry of Education. Anyone at the ministry who was not aware of its problems is either blind or has never ventured beyond Camp Street.
For another, as a teacher pointed out, all of the school’s issues were ventilated at a meeting held at the Ministry of Education in 2009. The school was represented by a former head teacher and Sam was reportedly at that meeting.
And then, five years later, Sam granted this newspaper a wide-ranging interview on the state of secondary education. In that interview, published on October 12, 2014, Sam had said that the ministry would ensure that all the regions get attention systematically even though they are aware that some of the schools might not have an ideal environment.
“So it is not just ensuring that there is a seat for a student; we are also working towards improving the actual physical structure of some of the institutions, and so we are very keen on identifying, hopefully in the not too distant future, a new secondary institution that could possibly address the needs of Brickdam Secondary and Central High school that are doing amazingly, but we are fully aware that they are not in ideal educational settings,” Sam had told this newspaper.
At a meeting on Tuesday, Sam finally told teachers and parents what they had probably suspected for a long time, that the ministry had no intention of fixing the school. He also stated that the ministry was close to finding a solution and that work on a new building (mentioned in the 2014 interview) could start by year end.
This is information that should have been given to the long-suffering teachers and parents of students attending the school as soon as it was known. Further, if in fact the ministry had been working assiduously on this issue for the past three years, the school and its PTA should have been kept up to date. Furthermore, methods could have been employed to phase the closing of the building three years ago by halting the intake of form one students. This would have allowed the remaining students to complete their secondary education in less cramped conditions. It would also have allowed for a period of adjustment. Alternatively, as it had done in the past, the ministry could have considered moving the entire school population, temporarily, to another building with the admission of new students placed on hold.
Dispersing over 300 students to city schools that must now be considering the intake of new students given that the National Grade Six Assessment results will be out shortly, also does a disservice to those schools. Especially given the fact that there isn’t a single school in the city that is not already bursting at the seams.
Therefore, the perception that the teachers are being punished for protesting will continue to persist. The saying that it’s not what you do but how you do it surely applies here.
NOTE: A decision was taken yesterday to have the students complete the school year at the Brickdam building. This was done after this column was completed.
