… as he lists successful interventions
EDUCATION Minister, Shaik Baksh has dismissed calls from Opposition political parties for the revamping of the education sector, as uninformed statements geared to score cheap political points are being made. Speaking at the launch of the Voluntary Mentoring Programme Friday at the National Centre for Educational Resource Development (NCERD), Baksh pointed out the ministry, in the past five years, has implemented significant reforms to transform its image and improve education delivery.
He pointed out that the numerous interventions at primary and secondary schools, and the hard work of the ministry’s team, headed by Chief Education Officer Olato Sam, have been bearing fruit.
This, the minister pointed out, is evident in students’ performance at the National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA) and the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) in the past few years.
These developments, Baksh pointed out, are there for even the myopic to see, pointing out that overall passes in Grades One to Three have improved by 42 per cent in the past 19 years. Guyana produced the top student at CSEC this year, and has done so for the fifth time in the past six years. Guyana has also produced the best science student in the Caribbean, an award it has won for the past six years. This year, Guyana won 16 of the 28 CSEC awards. At the 2011 National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA), more pupils from the country schools have made it into the country’s top one per cent at the examinations this year compared to last year. This achievement, he said, is a positive indicator that the government is making laudable progress in its quest to not only improve educational outcomes, but equity in education as well.
He said, too, that a range of new methodologies in the teaching/learning of literacy have been introduced at the pre-primary and primary levels. These include shared reading, guided reading, and the language experience approach at the pre-primary level. At Grades One and Two at the primary level, the literacy hour has been implemented, a programme designed to enhance pupils’ vocabulary, comprehension and reading skills.
These interventions, he said, are designed to enable pupils to learn to read by Grade Two.
Completion of primary education in Guyana has been ranked among the highest in the Caribbean and Latin America.
According to Education Panorama 2010 Report, Guyana has a 100 per cent students’ completion rate at the primary level, above Barbados with 97 per cent; Brazil with 95 per cent and Suriname with 91 per cent.
PBS, the World Women’s and Girls 2011 Data Sheet puts the completion rate in Trinidad and Tobago at 92 per cent and Jamaica at 89 per cent.
The ministry has also managed to reduce the drop-out rate at primary and secondary schools by 50 per cent in the past five years.
The drop out rate today is 5.5 per cent at the secondary level, and two per cent at the primary level.
Baksh also pointed out that the improvements of students’ performance at both primary and secondary schools are linked to the improvement in the number of trained teachers in the school system.
Currently, more that 70 per cent of teachers in the school system are trained, contrary to the 60 per cent inferred by APNU presidential candidate, David Granger, who also lumped the number of untrained and unqualified teachers in one category.
Baksh, in dissecting Granger’s claims, disclosed that in 2010, there were some 565 unqualified teachers in the school system, which is about 6.5 per cent of the total number of teachers in the school system.
This figure, he said, should be lower in 2011, as the ministry has adopted a policy to cease hiring unqualified teachers, except in the hinterland regions where a critical need exists.
Baksh also noted that the pass rate in mathematics has been a concern, not only in Guyana, but throughout the Caribbean, where the average pass rate is about 31 per cent.
Guyana, he said, has implemented several measures to improve students’ performance in this subject. And it has managed to continuously improve the pass rate in English, which now stands at 61 per cent.
Baksh pointed out that these are some of the programmes to improve education delivery and students’ performance, noting that while the education system is not at the pinnacle, it is on the path to getting there.
A 2007/2008 United Nations Human Development Report has ranked Guyana among the highest developing countries in the education index. The report placed Guyana 37th in the world, third in the Caribbean, after Cuba and Barbados, and second in South America, after Argentina.