Dear Editor,
I never knew that in Guyana the responsibility for school safety was not that of the Minister of Education, but that of persons called Regional Education Officers and a quite different Ministry. According to M P Ganesh Mahipaul this is so. Why so? Why is the Minister of Education not ultimately responsible for safety? Safety is the first responsibility of those in charge of education and the reason is very obvious. If you fail in safety, and you allow your student population to suffer grievous injury and death education ends. You have no one to teach.
And if you have nine REO’s and each conceives safety in a different way what can result is a rachefie system with a bit of this and a bit of that and sometimes much of what is unrecognizable as edu-anything. How certified is an REO to design accommodation for live-in students? If the REO plays himself and has the ultimate decision-making power what price does the community pay for his authority, much worse, if he brooks no ideas other than his own and requires teaching staff to genuflect in his presence. Huge temptation is placed in the hands of REO’s quite possibly to become wild cards. Distance can produce divinity.
The year is 2023. The education system needs to be pulled together immediately. The separation of safety from education is disastrous. Safety provides enabling infrastructure for education and the two are closely interdependent. If what now obtains is that promoted clerical staff call the shots then this shows gross ignorance of how ‘education’ is realized and sets the stage for mismanagement. While REO’s can monitor and disburse spending they should not be allowed to decide matters of education and to require of teachers only obedience. They pay bills. They should not be required to determine the pace of the educational effort.
Decisions on spending must be produced in alignment with national goals for education. Such decisions will seek to create equalities between region and region. To ensure this there must be a reporting structure guided by the Minister of Education and qualified personnel who understand how education happens. It is definitely not just curriculum delivery. The staffing of the Ministry of Education itself will exemplify what the Ministry itself perceives its responsibilities to be. The client base of education is a living individual who ages as progress is made through the system. Education is very time bound. If the powers that be do not fully appreciate this and therefore do not plan strictly in relation to time management dissatisfaction will flourish.
The Minister of Education should not take instruction from REOs which is what will happen when safety resides in the scope of duties of the REOs. The Minister should be able to veto any plan of the REO and should demand in writing proposals from the REOs. All proposals should support the time bound system. My school accountant could not determine developmental spending. He could advise me on the value of the money vote, he could go ahead with recurrent expenditure. Developmen-tal spending was my decision in consultation with HODs and other staff and in strict alignment with the published strategic plan of the school. I could also instruct application to allocate spending differently from original brackets if this could be justified in writing. Also, safety officers constantly monitored each school for preservation of life.
Guyana has such a marvellous opportunity to create an outstanding example of a caring and responsive school system. Now is the time to realize that no number of safe building codes by themselves will achieve this in those areas where students live away from their homes. Their accommodation should as closely as possible mirror a home setting. A home is not just a place to sleep. There is much more required including an overnight place for parents who do periodic visits. Each ‘home’ needs a nurse and several house ‘mothers’. And so on. Recreation should form part of what is available to the live-in student. And night storage of all cell phones. A computer room should be available to students with the necessary checks on what is being viewed. All of this and more.
The education system cannot flourish unless the Ministry of Education owns its own fleet of planes emblazoned with Ministry of Education insignia and ensuring immediate and effective service to far out places. Education therefore can be a means of creating employment even at the local level. Guyana has the opportunity and wealth to think out of the box and to excite the interests of all in education. Anything that upholds time management must be provided including official cell phones for schools. I have no doubt that REOs do perform a function but they themselves need to see that that function can set them up as targets for attack if it requires what they cannot give if they lack certain skills. So train them. Upgrade them. Certify them. Pay them well.
A comment on my previous writing claimed that despite emails etc., the Ministry of Education did not want to act on information presented. My response is that this may not be reluctance to act but may be evidence of incomplete concepts of how education happens, it may be unawareness of the time factor which governs educational effort, it may be the kind of lethargy which can result from numerous good intentions which are masked as achievements. The Minister of Education is young and beautiful. I urge her to be adventurous and risk massive change to bring education into high performance. Think big and think expensive. Money is no problem now, thank God. Do I as a ‘diasporan’ have a right to comment? Yes. My navel string is buried at Moruca, Barama Mouth and Mabaruma. I have plenty navel string and no one can say otherwise. Action, please. So I say!
Sincerely,
Gabriella Rodriguez
