Dear Editor,
I write to call on the Government of Guyana to abolish the “education tax” in the form of an extraordinary 14% VAT on parents who pursue private education for their children. The assumption by the authorities that the parents who send their children for education at private nursery, primary and secondary schools are “wealthy” and can afford the additional 14% education-specific tax is flawed and would have a severe negative impact in the advancement of the country.
The government’s decision cannot be driven by data evidence because it is well-known that the vast-majority of parents who send their children to private schools have low to extremely low socioeconomic status (SES). The real reason parents send their children to private schools up to the secondary level is that government schools, despite the massive spending of taxpayers’ money on public education, are a great failure. A cursory release of selective data from the Ministry of Education provides a window into this failure. Should the government release the full dataset for examination results such as for CXC, the extent of the failure would probably enrage taxpayers. For transparency that politicians like to talk about, they should release the entire national examination results dataset for independent statistical analyses.
The “Georgetown-centric political elites”, including those who have long abandoned their rural and village roots, need to understand that Queen’s College and few other Georgetown “elite” schools where their “elite” high SES children go to, are outliers, aberrations, that do not reflect the rest of the country’s public schools.
Instead of taxing parents who pay tuition and taxing educational supplies, the government should provide funding (grants) to private schools and set criteria for their success, and possibly tax benefits to parents who pay tuition for any sort of education. President Granger and two other Presidents before him have congratulated the private school, Saraswati Vidya Niketan (SVN), for its consistent high level of achievement year after year, and others have described SVN as the closest to a model school in Guyana, so it is a great shame that schools such as SVN and others will suffer because of the government’s private “education tax”. In most other countries, a school like SVN would have received the country’s highest honour, especially because of its student population drawn from largely low SES parents, but sadly in Guyana, such schools would suffer from the “education tax”. It is a great shame to see such a distinguished educator and an equally distinguished man of the cloth, Swami Aksharananda, protesting the “education tax” outside of the Guyana Revenue Authority’s (GRA) Camp Street Head-quarters. Swamiji is correct as reported in the press saying that the 14 per cent VAT “will in fact lead to a higher school drop-out rates, since there is a significant number of students in the private school system—including the SVN—which caters to children that are in fact from poor families who are barely managing to scrape school fees.”
The government, if they do not revoke, the private “education tax” will never be forgiven for this acrimonious act because they should not play with people’s education; cannot put the future of our children at stake. I suspect that this will become a hot political issue and the government will lose the friendly support of people who saw hope in them. The private “education tax” has gone too far and it must be rejected. Congratulations to all who rightfully protest this wrong, and others need to let their voices be heard for we cannot allow the government to put any of our children’s education at stake. This private “education tax” will be a damaging legacy on President Granger
Yours faithfully,
Surujpaul Badrinarine
