The one examination which all 11-12 year-olds across the length and breadth of Guyana have to sit is the National Grade Six Assessment. It is a placement exam for the secondary schools, at least where the Grade A and better resourced ones are concerned. Parents therefore see the assessment as critical to their children’s future, and even if they are in straitened circumstances many will still invest considerable sums in trying to ensure their sons and daughters secure a good grade.
Under normal circumstances that exam is taken in March or April, depending on when Easter falls, but this year all the education timetables were thrown into disarray by the unwelcome appearance of the coronavirus and the consequent closure of the schools. Inevitably the Ministry of Education was then forced to postpone the NGSA.
The school year runs from September to August, and now, with the beginning of the new year looming on the not-too-distant horizon, the education authorities are faced with a dilemma. If they postpone the exam until very late in the calendar year, the secondary schools would have no first-form intake in September. Far more importantly, the primary schools would have to hold back this year’s Grade Six cohort of 14,000 when the Grade Five one would be clamouring to move up into the Grade Six class. It would make no sense to combine the two because they will be at a different stages of learning, and the class sizes would be impossible, although even if they were kept separate neither the teachers nor the schools they serve are in any position to cope with those kinds of extra numbers, unless promotions right down the system were frozen for the duration, with admission to primary schools from nursery schools also being deferred.
It would be infinitely worse if the NGSA were cancelled altogether for this school year, because then everything would be held in stasis in the primary system for twelve months with nobody being promoted, which is not something parents would accept kindly. It would effectively mean the loss of a year for everyone. In addition, it might also mean that potentially 5-6 year-olds would also have to start school a year later. There would be promotions in the secondary system, but there would be no first forms and possibly even a surfeit of teachers in a few schools.
As it is none of the Ministry’s options is either obvious or easy. As we reported last week it has now decided that students will sit the exam on July 1 and 2, and that schools will reopen on June 15, with teachers returning the week before in order to prepare for them. It seems, therefore, that the education authorities have come down in favour of maintaining the integrity of the school year as it is currently organised in order to facilitate the promotion procedures that that requires. It might be noted that arrangements are also being made to allow CSEC and CAPE students to sit their exams, although in their case the numbers involved are very much smaller and the implications, while similar, less wide-ranging. Additionally, these are Caribbean examinations in relation to which the local authorities have altogether less leeway.
The Ministry has come under considerable criticism for its decision, more particularly as it pertains to safety issues. It has gazetted a range of strict protocols relating to sanitation and social distancing among various other things. The Guyana Teachers’ Union, however, is not impressed, describing the provisions as “inadequate”. While NCERD Director Jennifer Cumberbatch has said that the Ministry’s priority is the safety of students who have to write the exams, the union has a more relevant take on the problem: “The school environment poses a threat to learner[s], teachers, other school staff and families,” it stated.
And this is the nub of the problem. Eleven and twelve year-olds are not in any huge danger from going to school or sitting exams or going outside (the same is not true of the teenagers taking CAPE and CSEC). The evidence from across the globe is that although they contract the virus they are generally asymptomatic when they do, and if they do show symptoms these are very mild. The real problem is that they are a risk not so much to themselves, but to any adults they encounter, such as teachers, invigilators, school staff or even the public if they travel to the NGSA on public transportation. And finally, of course, a child could contract the coronavirus from a schoolmate who has no symptoms and then take it home and infect his or her family.
As we reported yesterday, Guyana has had no reported Covid-19 cases for five days, but the opening of schools could potentially cause a resurgence of the infection as has happened in South Korea, France, Israel and Japan after they relaxed measures to contain it. In addition, Guyana has to keep a watchful eye on Brazil and Venezuela, if not Suriname as well, because rates in the first-named country in particular are extraordinarily high and this nation’s borders are notoriously porous.
But there were other criticisms too. The Ministry has blithely insisted that during the period when students were at home they were able to take advantage of online learning as well as have recourse to radio, television, the newspapers and past test papers which it distributed. However, the best efforts of the education authorities notwithstanding, one does not have to be a schoolteacher to know that left to their own devices often children will not opt to learn of their own volition, even supposing they have access to a laptop or computer, which many do not. In addition there are a significant number of parents who will not know how to help their children, and in the urban areas there are many single mothers who work long hours as security guards and are not at home much to supervise them.
The situation is far more critical in the hinterland areas, as the Amerindian Peoples’ Association has pointed out to the Ministry, which so far has not appeared to take their concerns on board. Interior students, said the Association, have had little or no access to learning for almost three months, and it requested that an extended timeframe be given them so they could “get back into the school and other learning system[s] to be able to cope with the various exams facing them.”
The Ministry’s position has not been helped by information coming from Chief Education Officer Ingrid Trotman, who has said parents would not be forced to send their children to sit the NGSA. However, if they did not do so, they would be placed in the secondary school closest to them, although not in any Grade A school. If they are unhappy with the school, she said, “if they satisfy the criteria, they can ask to write the placement exam the next year July and I think they have to get over 70% in order to be placed at a school of a higher level.” For safety conscious and ambitious parents this was probably not what they wanted to hear.
The real problem is that no one knows what direction Covid-19 is going to take, and what the situation will be like in July, or even August, September and October. It makes planning a nightmare. The best anyone can do is extrapolate from what has happened in other places and see to what extent this might be applicable to our own situation.
In the light of the unease surrounding the July date for the NGSA, and all the difficulties it faces in relation to it, just what should the Ministry do? The union has recommended that schools reopen in September for the third term of the current academic year, and that the exam be taken by students in October. The new school year would then start in January 2021. That is not as simple a solution as might appear on the face of it. If the new school year is to begin in January, how would that affect the next school year? Would it become truncated, or is the GTU implying that it should now permanently run from January to December rather than September to August? Parents would certainly not welcome back-to-school expenses immediately after the Christmas season, and even on a one-off basis a January start would not be that well received.
Could the Ministry not meet the union as well as any other key stakeholder to toss around the possibilities for pushing back the date of the NGSA while still achieving an earlier date than January for the opening of the new school year? Could any wiggle room be provided by utilising the holiday period differently both this year and next, and finding ways to speed up the marking of the Grade Six Assessment dramatically?
Admittedly, the viability of any schemes would depend in the first instance on how the Covid-19 virus treats us in the next few weeks – if not longer.
