New Minister of Education Priya Manickchand has said that she has heard enough grumbling about the ‘No child left behind’ policy to persuade her that there should be a countrywide consultation about the policy and whether it should remain in the school system.
“I am not going… to answer you now to say whether or not we are going to keep it in place; what I can say is that we will be consulting widely across the country about how people feel about it and whether it should be something that stays in place,” the minister told the Sunday Stabroek in a recent interview.
In the past the policy has come under strong criticism from many quarters, with some labelling it “harmful and useless,” but according to Minister Manickchand from what she has been told, her predecessor, Minister Shaik Baksh, had the full support of his technical staff in the implementation of the programme. “All the bigwigs in education seemed to have supported it,” the minister told the Sunday Stabroek.
In late 2010 Cleveland Thomas, the headmaster of Wismar/Christianburg Secondary School was taken to task when he refused to promote children who had not passed their exams, in defiance of the ‘No child left behind’ policy. Many parents, students and teachers had rallied behind him.
Following this, the former minister in defence of the policy had told a media conference that the circular about the policy sent out to schools “clearly states that we are not going to just [give] automatic promotion… We are saying, that whilst you promote the child, the school has the responsibility of developing interventions, strong remediation, continuous remediation to ensure that those children catch up so to speak… It is not an automatic promotion without systems in place.”
He subsequently said that given the abundance of resource material in the schools, and with the adherence to the guidelines, a large percentage of students should be moving through the system. Stabroek News had reported him also as telling the media that the needs of every child in the class had to be assessed and certain remediation “effected to bring them up to a certain level.” This, he had emphasized, was the responsibility of the school.
‘Harmful and useless’
On the other hand Minister Manickchand said that even before she became the education minister persons had complained to her about the policy, and since her appointment to head the country’s education system in every place she has gone one or more persons without fail asked her about the programme.
“[They] claimed that it was harmful and useless and so on, and while I have heard and read the policy that was put in place, and there is some merit about why it was put in place, we cannot fail to hear what the recipients of this policy are saying, [those] being teachers, students and parents,” the minister said.
But Manickchand went on to say she was not sure that a proper evaluation was done to ascertain whether the policy had or had not produced results.
“But I know we can’t fail to hear what people are saying…” the minister conceded.
“I have heard my staff, senior policy-making staff who say it is working and that it is necessary, and I am hearing from others that say it is not, and I never like to make decisions without hearing from all stakeholders, so we would be doing that shortly.”
‘Unacceptable’
Meanwhile, the minister has sounded a warning that she is not going to accept schools not being in a proper condition to accommodate students at the beginning of a school term.
In the past every time a new school term begins there have been complaints from parents around the country about the readiness of the school and in some cases, for example, Golden Grove School last term, parents and students protest and close the doors of the school concerned.
“We should not be weeding school yards on the morning of school opening,” the minister said.
“If you have a school in a region that is not capable of opening or it doesn’t have furniture it means that a lot of people in that regional system fell down on what they were supposed to do, and that is not something I am prepared to tolerate,” the minister told Sunday Stabroek.
She said it is “unacceptable” that such problems exist in the regions and as such people “will have to do what they are expected to do or maybe we could find a place that they are better suited for.”
The minister said that the ministry has furniture, but if the region does report the need then the furniture cannot be sent to the school.
“The head teacher is the minister for that school, every school has a minister and every school has a CEO… and they have to be proactive too. Some of the schools I visited the head teacher never went to find out if the school is ready,” Manickchand said.
She said the regional education officers should visit the schools in their regions or have a system in place where they are aware of what is happening at each school.
And according to the minister, the government is providing exercise books for each student and these must be in the hands of the students and not sitting in some regional department or some head teacher’s office.
There is also the issue of schools using their own books and not the textbooks handed out by the ministry, she continued, as result placing a tremendous burden on parents.
“These are some things I want to streamline, but like I said I know where we came from and I know that I have met it at a point where it is the most streamlined, but there is still more work that we have to do.”
The minister said that she wants to ensure that the things the government invests in are beneficial to the students, and as such the ministry would be publishing things such as how many exercise and textbooks a student is entitled to, and if the child did not receive the books then a number would be listed for them to call.
Dropout rates
Meantime, in an effort to address the dropout rates of students the minister said she has spoken to the welfare department of her ministry and they have to play a larger role and have to assist in the identification of students who start having problems very early. Students who are absent for a week or a few days, should be visited at home by the officers in effort to find out why they are not attending classes. If they have stayed away because they are not academically inclined then their talent or interest should be identified.
The minister noted that other technically based programmes have been created to assist these students in the schools and an examination of that programme is currently under way to ensure it is working, and if it is not what is needed to make it work. The aim is to have a technical centre in each region so that students who are not academically inclined would have an option.
“We have to make sure that we challenge and channel those children into the right area and make sure that those areas are properly staffed, they have equipment, that they have the necessary challenge and it is not just something we say we are doing but we are not seeing the necessary results.”
The minister also told the newspaper that she is working on a “huge project” in the ministry trying to attain universal secondary education. She said it is going to be an expensive undertaking but it is not something they can “put off.”
