The Ministry of Education’s recent celebration over the 2025 National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA) Mathematics results is now facing fierce criticism, as education analysts and political commentators question both the credibility of the numbers and the Ministry’s motives.
Wednesday, Education Minister Priya Manickchand announced that 63.7% of students scored above 50% in Mathematics—a reported 28.7% improvement from the previous year. However, observers argue that this stunning turnaround lacks any reasonable educational foundation and appears more aligned with political showmanship than systemic reform.
In a hard-hitting article, Village Voice News columnist and political scientist Randy Gopaul dismantled the official narrative. Drawing on global education data, Gopaul noted that “according to the World Bank, the average time it takes for countries implementing aggressive education reforms to raise standardised scores by even 5 percentage points is 5–10 years.”
Even the United States, with decades of targeted investments, sees only 1–2 point gains every four years, while Jamaica’s Primary Exit Profile (PEP) has improved by less than four points over seven years—with international support. “So how did Guyana, with no major documented curriculum overhaul, no sweeping teacher retraining initiative, and no international aid partnership, suddenly outperform all regional benchmarks?” Gopaul asked pointedly.
He further noted the complete absence of:
- Any published 5-year NGSA recovery plan
- Nationwide teacher re-certification or retraining
- Major ICT-based instructional reforms
- Longitudinal tracking of student progress
- Equalised or modernised school-level funding
“If such reforms happened,” Gopaul continued, “why weren’t they shared with the public, educators, or stakeholders?”
Gopaul issued a challenge to the Ministry: “If the Minister’s claims are genuine, she must immediately: (1) publish the 2025 NGSA exam paper for comparison; (2) release anonymized score distributions by school and region; (3) detail CXC’s quality control steps, including whether third-party audits were done; and (4) publish the actual 5-year plan, if it exists.”
“If these cannot be provided,” Gopaul warned, “the public has every right to conclude that these numbers were massaged, the exam was watered down, or the results were politically calibrated.” He added that the announcement of these record-breaking scores “just months before a national election” raises grave concerns. “In the absence of any external audit, this looks less like progress and more like propaganda.”
Columnist GHK Lall offered a parallel critique, beginning with praise for the apparent gains but quickly pivoting to probing questions: How many of the students who “passed” with over 50% in Math actually hovered just above the line—at 50–55% or 55–60%? “Scores like those make it challenging to be competitive,” Lall wrote, especially when the secondary level becomes more rigorous.
He also flagged the impossible odds that children—many of whom were deprived of two foundational school years due to COVID-19 (2020-2022)—could rebound and outperform their regional peers without extraordinary interventions. Adding to that, the country lost nearly an entire semester due to a more than 70-day teachers’ strike in 2024. Yet the Ministry claims these setbacks had little impact.
“It also flies in the face of what the knowledgeable-both foreign and local, and government and private-said would take years to get back on an even footing,” Lall observed.
Even the compression of the top overall score from 503 in 2024 to 487 in 2025 raised red flags. “Why is that necessary?” Lall asked. “More pointedly, to accommodate whom, and with what as the driving impetus?”
Without transparency, there is no trust
Both commentators pointed to a wider pattern of government opacity. Lall noted public mistrust in official statistics across the board: food inflation, unemployment, census data, and even silence around ExxonMobil’s 2024 profit disclosures. Now, education—the country’s most vital institution—is caught in the same credibility crisis.
Gopaul and Lall’s critiques converge on one key point: without transparency, there is no trust.
While the Ministry of Education celebrates the NGSA numbers with confetti and applause, the public is left with more questions than answers. As Gopaul writes, “Until these details are provided, the narrative of miraculous progress cannot be separated from political convenience.”
And as Lall concludes with characteristic restraint, “There must be firm ground for me to lead the cheering when the children do well. I call on those responsible to guide us to the light with these encouraging numbers.”
Unless that light is cast openly, the Ministry’s self-congratulations may ultimately read not as a triumph of education—but as a troubling exercise in election-year theater.
