About two years ago the Minister of Education Nicolette Henry was reported to have said, ‘The Ministry of Education will be moving to review a 20-year-old school curriculum, in an effort to re-energise the education sector here. … Particular focus will be placed on English and Mathematics, subject areas the education system has been struggling with over time. Special focus will also be placed on the inclusion of the use of technology to aid teaching and learning’ (CH: 2/09/2017). I let it pass although I thought that her conceptualization of the nature of curriculum reform and thus about the time span she mentioned was incorrect.
Either because nothing was said on that occasion or we have different understandings when we speak of curriculum review, on 27/03/2019, the Department of Public Information (DPI) in one of its press releases went substantially further and claimed that the ‘nationwide curriculum reform … process … has not been undertaken since 1976.’ It also reported that the project coordinator of the Guyana Education Sector Improvement Project (GESIP), following in the footsteps of the minister, stated, ‘We cannot in earnest be trying to train children for the 21st century if the curriculum that we are using is two decades old because then you are not equipping children with modern skills for the world that they’re going to be facing.’ There appeared to be some dissonance between the two positions in this paragraph about the last reform effort, but it appeared to me that the distance between the two is so large and the former so absurd that there must be a mistake.
After all, my understanding is that a curriculum is the knowledge and the processes by which learners gain that knowledge, develop skills and alter attitudes and values to make themselves valuable modernizing citizens. On this basis, depending on the education level, continuous revision is critical. For example, at the highest educational level, ‘Each year, there needs to be a review of courses taught and decisions made about how they might be improved. Similarly, programmes should be reviewed after each cohort of students has graduated. In this way, curriculum development becomes an ongoing process and ongoing curriculum improvement might become institutionalized into the higher educational landscape’ (http://uwispace.sta.uwi.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2139/40118/ Continuous%20Curriculum% 20Development%20Chisholm.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=you).
But lo and behold, I discerned propaganda – repetitions make it true – and thus a fact check was required when the state media recently carried a similar report on what had taken place over two months ago. ‘There has not been a review of the National Curriculum since 1976. The Ministry of Education intends to review the curriculum for nursery, primary and lower secondary levels to improve student performance and to modernise the quality of education that is offered to the nation’s children’ (CH: 05/06/2019).
To account for the 1976 claim, a 2001 Review of the Ministry of Education’s 5-Year Educational Development Plan 1995-2000 by consultants, Macrae Mason Development, stated that, ‘Curriculum reform took place across all sub-sectors, particularly in the social sciences.’ The Review, however, recognise that ‘Curriculum development and materials production were constrained by the difficulty of attracting qualified experienced staff to NCERD (National Centre for Educational Resource Development).’ Furthermore, as then minister of education, in my 2005 budget presentation, which was based upon reports provided to me by the planning department of the ministry in collaboration with NCERD, I was quite effusive.
‘Mr. Speaker, the year 2004 saw the curriculum being revised at every level of the school system. At the pre-school level (Nursery), the Timehri Reading Series has been reprinted and the Easy Path Series in English, Mathematics, Science, and Social Studies for Grades 1-6 has been revised and distributed to schools. The ministry has also revised the Primary Science and Social Studies Curriculum Guides for Grades 1-6, compiled National Standards for Literacy and Numeracy from Nursery to Grade 6 and developed blueprints for the assessment of literacy and numeracy at the primary level. A Technology Education Curriculum for Primary Schools has also been introduced. We have prepared materials for delivery to all our schools of mathematics by Interactive Radio Instruction (IRI), utilizing the national radio network, local radio or CDs in remote hinterland areas. The Information Technology Literacy training program has also been expanded. The regional Information Technology Officers are expected to support these technological developments.
“Mr. Speaker, basic literacy is a sine qua non for survival in modern times and in this area we already have a problematical legacy with which to deal. Therefore, improvement in literacy and numeracy standards of school age children continues to be our highest priority and programs to raise literacy levels will continue into future years. New methodologies to teach literacy, pre-literacy skills and mathematics and to enhance teaching and learning have been introduced using modern technologies. We have established a Curriculum Advisory Committee to review and monitor our programs, projects, books and materials. In 2005 and 2006, emphasis will continue to be placed on improving literacy rates in the school population and reducing functional illiteracy in youths and young adults. In addition to the school based literacy efforts, a literacy program with emphasis on HIV/AIDS education has been launched for out-of-school youths with assistance from UNESCO. Members, as part of the effort to improve literacy and numeracy; in 2004, the ministry established a system of on-going school-based assessment in these areas.”
Of course, everywhere in the modern world there are efforts at educational – including curriculum – reform, for ‘the improvement journey can never be over. … systems must keep expending energy in order to continue to move forward: without doing so, the system can fall back, and thereby threaten our children’s well-being’ (SN: 08/07/2015). Therefore, given the existence of NCERD, it is difficult for me to believe that curriculum revision in Guyana stopped in about the middle of the first decade of the 21st century.
That said, while reform is necessary, the literature suggests that if we are to develop an effective school system it is even more important to grasp what needs to be reformed. England reformed the funding of schools; school governance; curriculum standards; assessment and testing; the inspection of quality; the roles of local and national governments; the range and nature of national agencies; the relationship of schools to communities; school admissions, etc., yet ‘a report published by the National Foundation for Education Research in 1996 demonstrated that between 1948 and 1996, despite 50 years of reform, there had been no measurable improvement in standards of literacy and numeracy in English primary schools’ (Ibid).
It might, therefore, be useful for the reformers to understand and make changes around the findings that ‘Intervention at the level of the school prevents clusters of failure from emerging in the system. However, the most effective schools and school systems monitor and intervene at the level of individual students’ (SN: 01/07/2015).
