President Dr. Irfaan Ali has a right to be concerned about the stagnant mathematics grades at the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CXC) and to believe that the education system is too centralised and will benefit from greater management autonomy. But Sir, although this is important, there is an even greater problem (SN:06/09/2023). Unlike the president, I do not believe that the loosely formed parent-teacher associations can be the basis for meaningful autonomy, but only a few weeks ago, although then focusing on reforms and monitoring at the national and regional levels, I did argue for decentralization and indicated that between 2001 and 2006 the Ministry of Education began comprehensive decentralisation of the education sector (‘Mahdia tragedy: a general systems failure:’ VV: 02/07/2023).
I have told this story before: in about 2004 the late Derrick Bernard, a former minister of education, was giving me a lift back to the Ministry of Education when he suggested that the ministry should not focus substantially only on the school system as its broader mandate is to adequately educate all the people to make a good life for themselves and their families as they contribute to their community. In my 2006 budget presentation, I put the problem thus: ‘Each year about 18,000 children are born of whom 9,694 took the CXC examinations in 2005 and of these, about 5,000 gained marketable qualifications. This has been the trend for some considerable time. Therefore, a substantial number of persons have left the school system without the capacity for making a decent life.’ President Ali, you will agree that in the interest of individual growth and development, and even public safety, the number of people still leaving the education system each year without a marketable qualification remains unacceptably high.
Maybe the president opted for parent-teacher associations because he assessed – as do I – that the mood of the PPP will not accommodate substantial reforms in this area. But perchance I am wrong. The President’s College Act 1990 and Order No. 18 of 1993: the Six Form Secondary Schools (Board of Governors) Order provide the scope for a radical and more businesslike form of decentralization at school level. They give school boards their own budget, autonomy over even the physical infrastructure and the power to employ and pay teachers. For instance, the Order states ‘The assets (whether movable or immovable property, including rights and interest) belonging to the state in relation to each of the schools to which this Order applies are hereby vested in the Board of Governors of that school and the Registrar of Deeds shall accordingly make the necessary annotations in his record in respect of the aforesaid immovable property.’
On 1st June 2005, the Ministry of Education increased the number of schools boards from about 5 to 30. Region 2: Anna Regina, Abram’s Zuil and North West Secondary, Essequibo Technical Institute. Region 3: West Demerara Secondary, Region 4: Annandale, Diamond and Covent Garden Secondary. Region 5: Rosignol Secondary. Region # 6: New Amsterdam Secondary and Tagore Memorial. Region 7: Bartica Secondary: Region 9: St. Ignatius Secondary. Region 10: McKenzie High, Linden Foundation, Linden Technical Institute. Georgetown: St. Rose’s, Bishop’s, St. Joseph’s, Central and Tutorial High, South Ruimveldt, Brickdam and Christchurch Secondary, St. Stanislaus College. The school communities – parent-teachers groups, the school administration and teachers, etc., – were to recommendation board members to the minister and, while the people who were nominated to the boards had the self-interest, resources (human and financial) and contacts to improve the schools and make the management at all levels more accountable, holding and developing this process proved to be very challenging.
Last week I said that the late Dr. Roger Luncheon, Head of the Presidential Secretariat, was usually very cautious, but on the formation of school boards I had to talk him out of trying to immediately establish more boards at primary level. After all, not only were we going into unfamiliar territory but some people thought that the boards were being given too much control of the schools, and notwithstanding the Act and confirmation from the government legal advisors, the Teaching Service Commission held that the boards would be usurping their function, the School Board Secretariat at the Ministry was inappropriately organised and understaffed, etc..
Based upon an Alternative Pathways approach to curriculum organization, by about 2005 the Ministry of Education developed a comprehensive plan that if properly managed and financed could have substantially reduced the problem of unqualified school exit. The idea was to use the facilities to be used in the provision of the in-school Alternative Pathways curriculum to institutionalise an almost free nationwide programme of adult education.
By the end of 2005, the Basic Competency Certificate Programme (BCCP), which had been piloted for about two years, was ready. The BCCP was a one year to eighteen months competency-based programme that students were to complete at about age fifteen to gain a Level 1 National Vocational Qualification in their given professional area. These national qualifications were to be based upon Caribbean National Vocational Qualifications, which themselves are based upon international standards.
A Level 1 qualification creates a semiskilled operative and is the basis of further training and/or employment. The Practical Instruction Centers (PIC) and the Technical Department of Secondary Schools were to deliver the BCCP programme in the school system and their premises were to be used in the evening to provide essentially the same opportunities to out of school persons. The first such programme was scheduled for Beterverwagting PIC.
In cooperation with employers of all sorts, local authorities, etc, when fully in place this approach, or some alternative, should have been perennially and fairly comprehensively providing marketable national and international qualifications to all Guyanese.
