In Education Ministry…
CHIEF Schools Welfare Officer (CSWO), Ms. Bhanmattie Ram, who demitted office last year end, said that she has fulfilled her ambition of giving back to Guyana, even if it was in a small way.

She offered the opinion in an interview with the Guyana Chronicle during which she reflected on the strides made by Schools Welfare Department since she assumed the post in July 2008.

The veteran counselor/educator pointed out that, when she took up the position, there were only 11 Schools Welfare Officers (SWOs) and, because of the limited number, the execution of a broad-based truancy campaign was a serious challenge.

Today, Ram, who is also an ordained priestess, said the department now has 35 officers and, more important, they are trained and capable of carry on where she left off.

Returning to her adopted home in New York, she said, prior to her assumption of the post here, there was no SWO in Region Four (Demerara/Mahaica), although that was an area with numerous reports of truancy.

Ram said, currently, there are five officers assigned to that region and they were able to reach out to various communities and impart the values of education to the most vulnerable groups.

She said some children who never attended school were admitted for the first time and a few who were dropouts resumed schooling.

Ram said the SWOs in that region have done an exceptional job in highlighting the issues affecting school-age children and resolving them.

A trained teacher with Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees in Theology from University of the West Indies (UWI), she emphasised that the move by Education Minister Shaik Baksh to increase the number of SWOs was a progressive one.

PERFORMED EXCELLENTLY
In that context, Ram said they have performed excellently in supporting and motivating the truants to stay in school and, despite not being able to reach all the areas they intended, they have touched most and, encouragingly, the campaign is an ongoing exercise.

She said the current batch of officers at the helm are energetic, willing and competent enough to tackle the challenges confronting the school system.

Ram said there will always be conflicts in schools and SWOs have to be ever alert to defuse such situations and restore calm, dignity and decency in the learning environment.

The retiree, who previously taught in Jamaica and New York, said she was pleased to note a reduction of violence in schools over the past year and credited the achievement mainly to her officers who actively engaged community leaders and teachers in the execution of their duties.

But she acknowledged that all is not well, admitting that the unavailability of transport for her officers outside of Georgetown, on some occasions, affected their ability to respond in a timely manner to calls from members of some communities.

Ram said, unfortunately, though her officers in the city have motor vehicles at their disposal, she was reliably informed that there was no budget for truancy campaigns for the last term, as the money was used on marches to highlight the importance of attendance during Education Month.

Now that she has left, she would like to see her successor vigorously keep track of the attendance of those students who have been taken off the streets for loitering and placed in school as well as other vulnerable students.

Ram said an important task for SWOs would be for them to monitor how regularly these students attend school and the reasons for their absence and look at possible ways to address their problems.

She is of the view that, although the Ministry of Education has made some headway in tackling truancy, there is still much more to be done.

For instance, Ram said many more SWOs who were recruited to boost the capacity of the department, need some vital support, in the areas of transportation and remuneration to motivate them to remain on the job and perform to the best of their ability.

She advocated that each senior SWOs be given duty-free vehicles and every Schools Welfare Unit must have a vehicle at its disposal.

That would significantly aid officers in undertaking their work efficiently and effectively, Ram said.

Her only regret on departing is that, had she stayed longer, more initiatives would have been taken, notably the complete establishment of a system to track students in school and the prosecution of some very negligent parents.