Time for Ministry of Education to dramatically reverse not promote inequities in education

Aug 21, 2022 Letters

Dear Editor,

In a recent article, ‘Canada-funded programme launched to train specialist maths teachers’ (SN, Aug. 17, 2022), it was mentioned that a Specialist Mathematics Teacher Training Programme is being launched in Region 4 for 30 participants. This is an excellent initiative as our economy is being severely changed by the needs of the oil industry and the need for heavy focus on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) education. (However, Glatthorn, Jailall and Jailall in their book recommend “STEAMA,” not just “STEM, the two A’s being Arts and Agriculture for a more comprehensive educational focus).

Equal access to education, health and “living wage” incomes are the great equalisers. However, the Ministry is perpetuating the old system of inequitable education by again focusing on Region 4 only as if Region 4 is all of Guyana and Region 4 is on a top priority list all by itself. This continues the old divide of urban versus rural that existed in education, health services, and almost everything else where rural folks are the less loved step-children. Could the Ministry have considered starting with Region 6, 5, 3 or 10, and then spread it to Region 4 and the other regions? Or, instead of selecting all 30 teachers from Region 4, could they have had 3 teachers from each region? I suspect the selection of Region 4 was done for the convenience of officials in Georgetown who are the programme managers, as is typical. So, equity considerations may not have been the driving factor. This is an old, unsolved problem although the PPP has been in Government for 25 of the past 30 years. Going forward, the principle of “equity” in programme implementation must be our guiding mantra. Inequities hurt rural people most who also happen to comprise the majority of the government’s votes farm.

Our main problem in education is we have run an inequitable system as the default setting for over six decades. This sad situation needs to be dramatically reversed pronto. This necessary, urgent change cannot be dragged out, requiring the rest of us to wait for trickle down from Region 4 to the rural areas. What happen, goat bite we? Instead of ‘One Guyana’ in education, we have ‘two Guyanas’ – better urban schools where students do better at the NGSA/CXC -CSEC/CAPE exams, and struggling, less resourced rural schools with a lesser quality of education. Soon the Ministry will be celebrating the handful of “Gifted and Talented” students who were the cream of the crop at the NGSA, and the CXC-CSEC/CAPE exams. Such a public relations stunt is to make it look as if the system is doing well throughout Guyana when the truth is that the majority of students are not. Trinidad has decided to abandon the celebration of the academically gifted few, but Guyana said it would continue to highlight the handful of high performers, complete with putting all their scores in the newspapers and photos attached. In the USA, that would be illegal.

The Ministry would do well to redesign this maths training at this point as I am sure the Regional Chairmen of the leftout regions might be upset at their folks being slighted. The Ministry of Education must be guided by equity as a forethought not an afterthought. With regards to equity, we must run faster, longer, harder to accomplish it, sooner rather than later. Our Minister understands this, and we look forward to appropriate action for change, ‘Because We Care!’

Sincerely,
Dr. Jerry Jailall

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