Dear Editor,
The overarching winner-take-all mentality at the political level in Guyana has become so pervasive as to render the otherwise important budget process meaningless. In fact, the budget is passed the moment it is presented. So it took two extraneous matters concerning the education sector to cause me to go back to a segment of the debate.
On January 24, Ms. Priya Manickchand, Minister of Education, during her budget 2023 presentation, drew stark contrasts between the respective school feeding program-mes APNU+AFC and the PPP/C Governments, highlighting the hiring of 241 cooks and nine monitors “to cook for the children properly, nutritiously, and qualitatively good [food]”. Yet, six days later, a Region 2 APNU+AFC councillor posted on Facebook that the children of Akiwini Primary School – a predominantly Amerindian community – had been served “dhal and rice” only, as a school meal.
At a press conference after that exposé, the Regional Executive Offi-cer explained that “vegetables were unavailable”, suggesting the unlikelihood that either all the children at the school are vegetarians, or that vegetarianism might now be official policy. But rather than a press conference by the REO at which she chided the councillor for taking the matter public, it would have been far more reassuring and appropriate if the Minister of Education had herself taken responsibility for the fiasco. She owes the parents and the nation a public apology and an undertaking that her Ministry would conduct an immediate review of the school feeding programme with a view to setting national nutritional standards, having regard to local conditions and culture.
Another issue that caught my attention relating to the administration of the education sector was an advertisement in the national media on 19 February, placed by the Minis-try of Education, inviting applications for 150 top positions in Board Governed Schools: Headmasters/ Mistresses (HM); deputy heads (DHM) of senior secondary, 6th form and Grade A secondary schools; senior masters/mistresses (SM) and heads of subject departments (HOD) of secondary schools.
In the same edition of the Sunday Stabroek, the Teaching Service Commission, at the request of the Ministry of Education, invited applications for 56 very senior positions in nursery schools, 220 in primary schools, 359 in secondary schools and 8 positions in Practical Instruction Centres.
Yet, bad as a number of close to 800 is, the aggregate number masks some really serious problems at the local level. The North West Secondary School in Region 1 has vacancies for an HM, DHM, SM, HOD – English, Home Economics, Mathematics, Industrial Technology, Science, Allied Arts and Business Studies. That’s ten top positions in a single school. And Westminster in Region 3 has vacancies for an HM and HOD’s for English, Home Economics, Industrial Technology, Information Technology, Allied Arts, Modern Languages and Business Studies. The only Regions which do not seem seriously affected are 2, 5, 6 and 10.
But back to the Minister. During her presentation she announced:
“Additionally, the Cyril Potter College of Education (CPCE) is going to, for the first time ever, they are going to be able to graduate more than 2500 students because of the initiatives taken there to go fully, although not solely online, and have entered 1,893 students when before they could have only done 500. We are going to have more teachers at a better quality.”
The Minister could not be unaware of the advertisement for the following positions at the College: a Principal; Vice Principals for Administration; Curriculum and Instruction, and Development; Senior Lecturers for Science, Education, Administration, Examination, Teaching Practice, Curriculum and Instruction, Mathematics, Pre-vocational, Social Studies, English and Modern Languages, and Distance Education.
If the CPCE can graduate more than 2500 students with 15 of its top positions being unfilled, then instead of a crisis in the education sector, we have a miracle.
Yours faithfully,
Christopher Ram
