Priya’s problems

Aug 28, 2020 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Priya Manickchand has returned to the Ministry of Education. Her previous stint there was conspicuous for its underachievement. The Minister of Education is best remembered for two incidents, one of which had nothing to do with education but the consequences of which turned out to be a political education for her handlers.
Her infamous ‘feral blast’ at the home of the American Ambassador was a monumental faux pas, except for those who are immune to being shamed. After that astonishing outburst, the Americans had little sympathy for the PPP/C. As such, when the PPP/C made aspersions about the elections and the conduct of the Chief Elections Officer, this gained no traction with either in Young Street or in Washington.
The PPP/C paid a severe price for Manickchand’s tactless, undiplomatic, inappropriate and uncouth outburst. It had to hire a special lobbyist to undo the damage caused by her intemperate remarks. The experience served as a bitter political education for the PPP/C’s failure to master the art of diplomatic criticism. They learnt the hard way about the risks of reproving a representative of a foreign state. Manickchand is fortunate to have been given a political reprieve after that outburst.
The second thing for which the Minister will be remembered was her decision to abandon the Automatic Promotion Policy which became known as the “no child left behind” policy. To be fair to her, she inherited this policy from her predecessor and from educators who were never conceptually clear about what such a policy entailed.
This highly unpopular policy ended up hurting the Donald Ramotar administration. The only fault which could be laid at the feet of the Minister is that it took her too long to scrap the policy.
The Minister has now reassumed her former position and with it the opportunity to make amends for the lack of effective educational policies during her previous tenure. Education effectively was on auto-pilot during that stint. She will be hard-pressed to point to any significant achievements in the Education Ministry during her previous tenure.
She did make a feeble attempt in her Budget address in 2014 to identify some achievements. But these were cumulative over a period of more than 20 years and could hardly be credited to her stewardship. The results of examinations in which more than half of the country’s students grossly underperformed represented an indictment of the PPP/C’s education policy, including her stint. It also proves that spending larger chunks of the country’s Budget on education – during 2013, it was around 15.9% of the Budget – does not translate into educational success.
In her Budget speech of 2014, she piggybacked on the individual achievements of the country’s academic high-flyers. But those achievements clearly were not reflective of the overall performance of the country’s children. It would be much more accurate to say that the high-flyers did exceptionally well not because of the country’s education policy but in spite of it.
Guyana’s education system is in a mess, perhaps in a worse state than when she left it in 2014. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the cancellation of classes and the previous administration’s policy of scrapping the one laptop per family initiative will affect the ability of the Ministry to offer on-line classes to all students during the pandemic.
Despite being on the job for almost 3 weeks, the new Minister of Education is yet to find a way around this dilemma. She appears still to be searching to find a firm footing among the multitude of problems which affect the educational sector.
She continues to trumpet the PPP/C’s flagship educational initiative – the $10,000 cash grant. This is an inequitable policy which benefits both the rich and the poor when the Ministry should have been specifically targeting only poor students. The assistance to poor parents would be more substantial if there is a means test. But the PPP/C cash grant policy was believed to have been introduced to woo votes rather than impact on poor households.
The Minister will be judged on her ability to move beyond her trademark hyperbole. This may prove challenging for someone who does not have a spectacular record of policymaking – a task made much more difficult by the retention of fossilized thinking within the Ministry.
If the Minister is serious about improving education, new skills, new thinking and a new vision needs to be introduced within the Ministry. And this may be her hardest task ever because this will entail shelving political appointments, something that the PPP/C may find problematic.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)