By Ariana Gordon

THE Ministry of Education (MoE) has not renewed the contract of Chief Education Officer (CEO) Olato Sam and will be advertising the position from this weekend, sources close to that ministry have revealed.Sam according to the source on Wednesday received a letter from the ministry informing him that his contract will not be renewed. Reports are that the MoE might be interested in advertising the post, as there was no automatic replacement from the current pool of assistant chief education officers.

When contacted on Thursday by this publication, Education Minister Dr Rupert Roopnaraine was unavailable for a comment. His secretary said he was “engaged at a meeting.” Subsequent calls to the minister’s mobile proved futile.

Meanwhile, the CEO was notably absent from the ministry’s press conference held on Wednesday to announce the results of the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) and the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE). Instead, Acting Chief Education Officer (ACEO) Nursery Ingrid Trotman presented the 2016 CSEC results, a task that had previously fallen on Sam. It is however unclear why Sam was absent from the press conference held at the National Centre for Education Research Development (NCERD).

Sam, who is a former student of Queen’s College, started working at the MoE as Technical Adviser to the Minister of Education in 2007. That very year, he served as Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Cyril Potter College of Education (CPCE) where he introduced a number of education initiatives geared at designing and structuring the Guyana Teacher Education Improvement Project funded by the World Bank.

He was appointed CEO, MoE in January 2011. He became a controversial education figure following his appointment to the post of CEO five years after serving as Technical Advisor to the minister. The post became controversial after former ACEO Genevieve Whyte-Nedd had acted in that post until her retirement but was never appointed to serve as CEO.

She acted in the post of CEO from 2005 until her retirement. Whyte-Nedd had applied for the post of CEO following advertisements published in March 2006 and October 2006 but unfortunately was unsuccessful. Prior to acting in the post of CEO in 2005, she did same from October 2001 to October 2002.

But that was not the only controversy that surrounded Sam; he was partially blamed for the failure of the MoE’s Automatic Promotion Initiative which resulted in teachers voicing concern over the programme. Teachers had argued that the initiative resulted in students being lazy after discovering that they would be promoted even if they don’t perform up to standard.

The Automatic Promotion initiative was subsequently called ‘No child left behind programme’ by the People’s Progressive Party (PPP). Sam in recognising the defects of the initiative admitted that some areas had not been taken into account by the MoE. As such, public consultations were held and those consultations resulted in the programme being reviewed in 2013.

Meanwhile, in June, the MoE had instructed that the Brickdam Secondary School be closed following protests by teachers of the school. The teachers refused to work in what was described as “poor conditions,” including the lack of adequate toilet facilities, and space.

Sam described the protest as “ridiculous and illegal” and instructed the teachers to “Go back to your classes and teach the people children like you’re being paid to do,” the Guyana Chronicle had reported.

That aside, Sam is the holder of a Bachelor’s Degree in a special major ‘Sociology, Anthropology and Education’ from the Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. He also holds a Pennsylvania Teachers’ Certificate in the area of Social Studies.

The CEO is also the holder of a Masters’ Degree in International Education with specific focus on Latin America and the Caribbean. He taught Social Studies and English Literature at the Walton High School. Sam was also Coordinator of the Alternative Education Program for the education district at MS 144.

After studying, he returned to Guyana to serve as the Director of the New Millennium Institute and introduced the phonetic-based literacy instructional programme through the Reading for All Learners Programme (RALP). The CEO also lectured at the University of Guyana (UG), School of Education and Humanities, the Departments of Foundations and Education Management and Curriculum and Instruction. In June 2006 he became the Head of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction and served in that capacity for one year.