Long before last week’s announcement that Dr Rupert Roopnaraine was being removed from his portfolio, it had already been clear that our education system was underperforming seriously and that it would not have been possible, whoever had been chosen to replace him, to significantly improve the situation in the short or even the medium term.
To say that Dr Roopnaraine was shifted because of the current state in which the education system finds itself would be to indulge in an exercise in self-delusion, to say the least. The meltdown began more than three decades ago and has been in a condition of near freefall ever since. The extent of the now outgoing minister’s tenure would not have been anywhere near sufficient to allow for the crumbling infrastructure of the sector to be fixed. Problems, like poor physical infrastructure, a scarcity of qualified teachers, poor pay, failure to attract persons with suitable qualifications to the profession and a dramatic evidence of official lack of regard for the profession of teaching arose out of years of chronic neglect. This is also not to forget the disparity between the boisterous rhetoric on the importance of education and the lack of any real remedial action by successive political administrations over the years. What currently obtains is no less than what our governments have worked for.
A Commission of Inquiry into the challenges facing the education system was perhaps the predictable way for the present administration to go, though it has to be said that ascertaining what the problems are is one thing, and applying appropriate measures of material resources and commitment to remedying those shortcomings is another. Here, we need to remind ourselves that the promulgation of the report of the Public Service Commission of Inquiry, has not, up until now, been attended by much in the way of remedial attention. Change, of course, takes time, but in the particular case of governments in Guyana, history tells us that there are serious risks that can result in allowing our politicians to grow comfortable with that axiom.
Up until now the changing of the guard at the Ministry of Education has been attended much more by the chatter surrounding the political permutations of the adjustment (what has occurred surely does not merit the description of a Cabinet reshuffle) than by what the changes might mean substantively for the Ministry of Education and by extension, the education sector, as a whole. First, there has been a fair amount of public chatter over whether or not the shifting of Dr Roopnaraine might have to do with the state of his health and by extension, his physical ability to oversee the considerable effort required to restore the education sector. Secondly, there are the political implications of removing the Working People’s Alliance’s (WPA) only Cabinet member in the coalition administration (a matter on which we were likely to hear more at yesterday’s WPA press conference) and thirdly, there is the energetic public discourse ensuing over whether Minister Nicolette Henry, whose performance in her earlier ministerial capacity has been heavily criticized, is either professionally or administratively (some have also added, temperamentally) suited to heading what is widely regarded as one of the two or three most important government ministries.
All of this, of course, makes for juicy public and political chatter, though it helps little in sorting out the substantive issue which is, of course, just where all of this leaves the long-promised and badly-needed overhaul of the country’s education sector. What does not help is the fact that the manner in which the official disclosure of the adjustments has been made has been underpinned by dissonance rather than clarity.
The case of Minister Nicolette Henry is perhaps baffling. While the official release declares that she will now “take up the role of the Minister of Education” it alludes to the establishment of a Department within the Ministry of the Presidency to oversee “the innovation and reform of the education sector” though it declines either to provide a timeline for the establishment of this new “Department,” or address with any degree of specificity the dividing line between Minister Henry’s responsibilities and those of the Department of innovation and reform. Accordingly, and in the absence of clarity one might be forgiven for assuming that the separation of responsibilities to do with innovation and reform from the remainder of the Ministry of Education reflects a clear even if unstated understanding on the part of President Granger of the new Minister’s limitations.
The dissonance goes further with Minister of State Joe Harmon seemingly contradicting the pronouncement made in the official media release that Minister Henry will “take up the role of the Minister of Education” (a pronouncement that is attended by a connotation of permanency), declaring instead in a video release that Ms Henry will be performing the functions of the office of the Minister of Education “until further notice,” implying that a further adjustment could be made at some subsequent stage.
The point about all this is that if only because there are already major concerns over the direction in which our education is heading the Granger administration must, and quickly, not only bring clarity to the particular status and respective responsibilities of Dr Roopnaraine and Minister Henry but must also, in the instance of Minister Henry, make public the confines of her particular responsibilities as Minister of Education (will we see the appointment of a new minister responsible for Culture, Youth and Sport, or will these areas of responsibility simply be tagged on to another ministry or perhaps the same one?). Then there is, of course, the issue of the announced department on “innovation and reform,” which, up until now, remains ill-defined, though once its full parameters become public might well raise other issues that have to do with who is really in control of the education portfolio and how that impacts on the effectiveness with which it is administered. If the administration’s stated commitment to reforming the education sector is to be taken seriously we are entitled to much greater clarity on the recent ‘adjustments’ and what they mean in real terms.
