Dear Editor,
Although I am not certain how Mr. Mohammed S. Hussain could quarrel with the AFC for passing a motion to ‘unequivocally support free education from nursery to university’ when he admits that university education is still not free, if it were not so serious, the following laughable story justified his comment that, ‘The AFC wants to use oil resources for free education yet all the lawyers in the party could not advocate for the new education act to be passed in parliament. Our current education act is nearly 80 years old. Oil money is not needed to get this done. I hope the AFC passes a motion at its NEC meeting in 2020 to bring the new education act to parliament’ (SN: 5/1/2019).
The December 2005 report of the 2003 US$50m Basic Education Access and Management Support Programme (BEAMS) financed by a loan from the Inter-American Development Bank showed that 25% of the work to complete a new education bill was finished: a national task force to oversee the task was in place, a national specialist had been employed, a draft bill was under revision and in the process of nation-wide consultations, Georgetown was already covered. I became Minister of Education in 2001 and in 2006, the year I left the ministry, it was reported that 40% of the work was completed.
During my period at the Ministry of Education, we passed the Technical and Vocational Education Act in 2004, and the National Accreditation Act in 2004, and established the TVET and National Accreditation Councils. We had hoped that the laws would have fitted in well with the establishment of a national qualifications framework that could have transformed the delivery and integration of tertiary type education in Guyana.
Each year, about 8,000 students leave the school system without marketable qualifications; over a generation this means that 240,000 people are left to fend for themselves the best they can, and it can be no surprise that some become a problem for society. The formal education system needs to cater for these people, and as such, a comprehensive nation-wide programme both in and out of school with TVET and integrated accreditation at its heart is necessary, if only to stop the flow of unqualified people and provide opportunities for all adults to acquire marketable qualifications. In about 2005, the ministry also began to pilot such a ‘skills for life’ programme in Beterverwagting Village to accommodate the latter category of persons.
Mr. Shaik Baksh became the Minister of Education 2006, and when he left in 2011, it was reported that the new education bill was 70% completed. And when Ms. Priya Manickchand, who succeed Baksh, left in 2015, the new bill had just reached the National Assembly. Today, just short of 15 years later, the new bill is apparently still where Ms. Manickchand left it, a national qualification framework is now being worked on to go to the National Assembly and a comprehensive TVET programme does not exist. In the meantime, more and more unemployable people are on the streets and arguably there is much more crime!
Believe it or not, this level of procrastination is not unique, for in October 1992, when I became the Minister of Labour, Human Services and Social Security, perhaps because the Board of Industrial Training was under the ministry, a draft Technical and Vocational Educational Bill was awaiting the new PPP/C government. However, in about the first quarter of 1993, responsibility for technical and vocational education was moved to the Ministry of Education and when I arrived there in 2001, almost the identical bill was still there and was only passed some 12 years after it first saw the light of day!
Yours faithfully,
Henry B Jeffrey
