AS Editor-in-Chief, the crucial decision to publish or not to publish an article, story or letter in the Kaieteur News is the ultimate responsibility of my friend, Adam Harris.

He chose not to publish a letter I had written in response to an article he wrote: “Chat language will get us no jobs” (Kaieteur News, October 20). Instead, he took offence to a World Bank Report I quoted in my letter, and has since written another article condemning the Report, “A most questionable World Bank report got my goose” (Kaieteur News, October 26).
In his article, Adam wrote, “When I described the education system as calamitous, I never realised that I was touching a nerve. One day Harry Gill came to me and informed me that I had paved the way for him to release information that he had suppressed.” The suggestion that I was in possession of suppressed evidence is incorrect. In fact, I thanked him for opening the door for me to expose some evidence that the opposition was successful at suppressing from our youth. I think you can see the difference.
The fact that he referred to me by name in his article, gives me the right to respond and once again, quote the source of my information. To deny publication of this letter would be unjust, and would deny his readers the opportunity to objectively judge the credibility of my information, as opposed to forcing his opinion on the readers of Kaieteur News.
Like everyone else, Adam is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts. He is either living in denial, or is too ashamed to admit his failure to denounce the decrepit education system that existed under the PNC’s rule while he was Editor of the PNC organ, the New Nation.
In his article he wrote: “Minister Priya Manickchand, for example, says that her government has spent extensively on education and today the nation is reaping the rewards. She informed me and the other reporters that prior to the advent of her government, only eight per cent of the people who wrote the external examinations passed English. The pass rate for Mathematics was also equally ridiculous.” For the record, the table below shows the percentage of students at the Secondary School Entrance Examination (SSEE), scoring more than 50% of the marks in each subject area. This confirms that the Minister of Education was absolutely correct when she said only 8% passed English then. These figures were not obtained from the World Bank report that Adam discredits, the source is the World Education Forum (Education For All -EFA), another recognised body.

Note that when these results were published in 1992 before the PPP/C took office, only 8% of students passed the SSEE in English, and 4% in Mathematics. Today, that figure has steadily grown to 45% pass in both English and Mathematics.

As the Education Minister Priya Manickchand said at the press conference Adam alludes to in his article, “The People’s Progressive Party / Civic Government of Guyana has allocated large sums of money to the (education) sector every year. Twenty years into office, we’ve seen what that means… sometimes from year to year you don’t realize what this investment means. But it means we have moved from 30% trained teachers to 70% trained teachers; we’ve moved from a place where 10% of our schools were habitable, to a place where 80% of our schools are habitable; we’ve moved from a place where some primary school children had no place to go to, to a place where every single primary school aged child can access a primary education. We’ve moved to a place where Guyana enjoys pride of place in our nursery programme… 85% of our nursery cohorts are in school, it’s much higher on the coast. We’ve moved from a place where 35% of our secondary-aged students could not go to school because there was no place to put them, to a place where we’re talking about what quality of education we’re offering those schools. So the investments have, over the years, produced things that we can count, tabulate and celebrate. Does that mean that we don’t have work to do? The answer is, we do. A 45% of our children passing English and Maths now is too low, and it’s not acceptable. But we must note when we make these statements, if we’re going to be fair and balanced, that there have been remarkable improvements.”
Adam Harris certainly had every opportunity after this press conference to question the minister on the decrepit conditions of the pre-1992 education sector I raised in my letter, but he was obsessed with the salaries I quoted from the World Bank Report. and it appears he had every reason to be.
I now accept that these figures as quoted by the World Bank Report are definitely inaccurate because I was able to research that the minimum monthly wage received by a public servant in 1992 was $3,137, and the highest was $16,358.
Therefore, it is quite possible that whoever inputted the figures in that Report, left out a digit or two. However, apart from teachers’ salaries, I stand by the World Bank Report because I’ve seen other similar reports of the decline in Guyana’s pre-1992 education from credible agencies such as the Library of Congress.

HARRY GILL