The editorial ‘Vocational education’ (SN 15/07/2016) has rightly called upon the government to give greater priority to technical and vocational education and training (TVET). In August 2010, a letter of mine was published in the media, which stated that ‘There is little doubt that one of the major problems that have faced Guyana over the past decades has been the enormous waste of human resources that results from our education system. …. It is now commonplace that of the 17,000 to 19,000 persons who enter the school system each year, only about 40% leave with any meaningful qualifications. Thus, on any given day, there are hundreds of thousands of unqualified and incidentally qualified persons seeking to make a good living.’
I also argued that the establishment of a comprehensive TVET programme holds much of the answer to this problem. All of this was rooted in a fundamental acceptance of TVET as a necessity, particularly in our socio/economic condition. As minister of education in 2004, I presented a paper that sought to give some idea to the Council for Human and Social Development (COHSOD) of the ministry’s thinking on these matters. That paper, which I will deal with next week, considered some still relevant issues such as what link should be established between general and technical education and the nature of the arrangements for student ‘entry into the vocational education system as opposed to them continuing in the general education system’ (Editorial).
But the editorial also raised the important issue of the nature and need for education reform, which I will here attempt to put into perspective. For example, it claimed that ‘This year, some $40.3B has been allocated for the education sector, and the lion’s share of resources is concentrated in schools and educational institutions in the capital and on the coast.’ It further stated that ‘A comprehensive overhaul of the education system in Guyana remains a task still to be done, something which has been admitted by the current, as well as, the previous, Minister of Education, both of whom promised reform.’
The education system is like any other: reform is ongoing to take into consideration new development. Although we tend to hear now and then the very informed contention that ‘nothing has changed for decades in the education system, no one marginally related to the system can possibly have failed to see that at both physical and institutional levels much has been changing.
Thus when well meaning people make the call for ‘comprehensive’ reform one is left to believe that they are speaking about the need to reform the less visible processes of education.
In passing, it appears to me that, without directly saying so, the editorial was attempting to underpin its demand for reform by way of the usual contention that $40.3B is a huge sum and that the nation is not getting value for its money. This would be a most questionable position.
Overall in the Commonwealth Caribbean over the last decades Guyana has been at the bottom of the Caribbean Secondary Education Examination table. This should not be surprising as Guyana invests much less in its education system than the other countries. These apparently huge numbers have been thrown around for some time but most briefly, as I indicated about two weeks ago, in 2009 Guyana was only spending about 3.5% of its GDP on education; about US$320 per child per year, with consequential results. In Barbados and Jamaica the figures were about 6% of GDP: US$3,598 and US$844 per child respectively.
It is absurd to believe that a ministry that since the latter half of the 1980’s has been consistently devising and implementing strategic plans would not have been also persistently attempting to keep up to date with the latest developments in education. Furthermore, it is even more unbelievable that over the last three decades the international community would have been funding education development in Guyana to the tune of tens of millions of US$ simply for the system to continue without meaningful change!
Notwithstanding numerous attempts to involve the populace in education planning and development I believe that most people do not have a good idea of what has been taking place at the process level. To give some notion of the nature and scope of the interventions that have been made, let us take as an example the US$35m 2003-2007 Basic Education Access & Management Support (BEAMS) programme.
This programme brought to Guyana many world renowned education specialists (if my memory serves me right, one was an education advisor to President Bill Clinton who took a large cut in remuneration to come and help) to work with the ministry and stakeholders to plan and implement the project.
BEAMS had three components: (1) school performance, which dealt with curriculum and literacy, innovative technologies, teacher education and testing and assessment; (2) organisational strengthening and human resource development, which was concerned with education management information systems, human resource development and organisational strengthening, and (3) civil works, which dealt with the building and renovation of many schools in the attempt to provide universal secondary education and also deal with the provision of school furniture, etc.
The programme was assessed against 32 major and 70 minor interventions. To grasp the scope of what was taking place, consider the first element of the first subcomponent (curriculum and literacy) of the first component (school performance).
It sought to establish ‘age-appropriate attainment standards in literacy and numeracy and develop and implement a criterion-reference strategy for the targeting and of resources and interventions to underperforming and under-resourced schools.’ More specifically, it aimed to ‘[e]stablish criteria for curricular revision; review existing nursery and primary curriculum in language arts and mathematics; review current material used for teaching literacy and numeracy; assess student mastery, teaching practice, and special need requirements in schools; and analyze the readiness of nursery-age children for transition into primary schools.’ By the end of 2005, 75% of the conceptualization and 30% of its implementation was completed.
BEAMS was only one programme and as such, it makes little sense to speak of the need for reform outside of the notion of continuous reform and development. The big problem with regimes past and present is that in their early years they spend a great deal of time criticising their predecessor and attempting to harvest low hanging fruits.
Thus the current regime is plying us with concerns about after school lessons and the dire consequences of the three-tier secondary assessment system and is also attempting to blindside us with the elusive value of ‘comprehensive’ inquiry and reforms.
