— greater focus to be placed on equitable delivery of quality education, says Henry

EFFORTS are continually being made by the Education Ministry to remove what has been considered to be high levels of disparities between coastland and hinterland (rural) schools.
Minister with the portfolio, Nicolette Henry, on Friday accepted that the existing disparities contribute significantly to the state of the country’s education sector.
She noted that many students who hail from hinterland communities, in particular, have been struggling to attain suitable marks for entry into secondary schools after completing the National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA).

Notwithstanding this challenge, the minister assured that her Ministry’s responsibility is to ensure that the disparity which existed prior to her administration taking office is reduced.
“We have worked on an intervention at the primary level to address the gross disparities that we recognised existed in the system for a number of years,” the minister said.
An analysis and disaggregation of data relative to the NGSA results for 2016 showed that the hinterland regions performed poorly at the examinations, and this, in addition to other factors prompted the two- year-old APNU+AFC administration to call for an emergency intervention in the area of mathematics.

But while the intervention targetted mathematics specifically, it should be noted that additional focus was placed on the other core areas: English, Science and Social Studies.
The study conducted will serve as a baseline and once proven effective would be expanded and replicated across the country with the hope of bridging the existing gap.
“I am happy to report that the intervention bore fruit,” the minister said, and cited Region Eight ( Potaro-Siparuni) as an example of a hinterland region where there was need for deep intervention.

She explained that the problems facing the hinterland and other rural communities have to be looked at from a broad perspective where the community, parents, teachers, students and the Ministry of Education are involved, given the different levels of responsibilities.
“It wasn’t just a Ministry of Education issue; it was an issue that affected us on several levels,” Henry told Guyana Chronicle at her Main Street office.

PARENTAL INTERVENTIONS
“One of the things that we did, parental interventions, met with parents and determined what support they needed in order to be optimally involved in their children’s education. We met with teachers to determine what level of support they also needed at optimum performance in the classroom and the administrative arm which provides support to make all of this happen.”

As a result of the ministerial intervention, both teachers and monitors have been recruited by the ministry with the aim of alleviating the challenges facing students and teachers in the non-coastal regions of the country.
“We recognised that a lot of time the contact hours in the classroom in the rural communities was less than that in the urban setting, and so that in itself can create disparities because of course, if you’re having lesser hours, you’re having less quality that speaks to the issue of teacher accommodation, using aids such as radios and the methodology,” the minister noted.

Given the findings, Minister Henry said a comprehensive programme was created to address the issues identified in Region Eight. She lamented that the situation was so poor that no male student passed mathematics; something she identified as a red flag.
“We went in, we worked with them, spent time on the ground resolving issues, fixing management and operations and technical issues so that we can reduce the disparities.

Based on the lessons learned from that intervention, we would be in a good position to expand and replicate in all of the hinterland regions, but more particularly, we now have data which can inform our programme planning,” the Education Minister added.
Meanwhile, when asked about the limitations faced by teachers across the country and the effects same has on the existing level of disparities the minister said, “It is a problem and it is a problem that has to be addressed at several levels.”
However, she noted that the placement of more trained teachers within the hinterland and rural communities will not solve the existing problems.

MONITORING AND EVALUATION
“Just putting more trained teachers cannot be the solution; a big part of the solution lies with the monitoring and evaluation and also the assessment of the delivery of the content, and that is why the monitors have a critical role to play because you may be a trained teacher but the way in which you deliver your content may not yield optimal result,” she stated.

Additionally, some hinterland communities, in particular Indigenous communities, speak traditional languages and often time there are language barriers which may prevent either the students or teachers (coastal) from understanding.
So while some communities may speak English as their first language their dialect at home may also pose challenges.
“It has to be dealt with at all those levels; it can’t just be dealt with by putting a well -trained person to go,” said Henry, who noted that the other challenges faced by her sector is the lack of trained teachers in hinterland locations.

However, last year, the ministry engaged the administration of the Cyril Potter College of Education (CPCE), and discussions are continuing, on having more persons trained as teachers in the hinterland regions.
“It may not be the most feasible thing to take a coastlander, train them and think that they have to perform.

“We have to have the people from the community trained. So CPCE will be conducting training in those rural communities so that people from the communities can be trained in their environment and remain there because we are more likely to have people stay there, if they are from there and more importantly if we don’t remove them from that environment.”
Moreover, the minister said when examining sustainability of programmes, broad factors have to be examined.

She disclosed that in keeping with the government’s intention to reduce disparities in the sector, during the July-August school break, CPCE will be providing technical support in hinterland regions, with specific emphasis on Region Eight, a region which she said needs lots of work and support.
Meanwhile, the education minister has lauded the concept first advanced by President David Granger which speaks to teachers being university graduates.

QUALITY EDUCATION
Just after taking office in May 2015, the President said school children must be guaranteed inclusive quality education, and for that to happen, the head-of-state made it clear that “It is necessary to have properly educated teachers to ensure that our children have access to quality education.”
During the Ministry of Education’s awards ceremony, the President committed to placing great emphasis on teachers’ education. “We would like to ensure that, over the next 15 years, all teachers in our school system are university graduates so that our children can benefit from this education.”

In like vein, Minister Henry noted that a policy decision in this regard would only yield positive results.
She said from a technical perspective, she believes that there is value in having academic degrees as CPCE prepares teachers for delivery “but you have to have the content to deliver”.
“So if you are a mathematician and a trained teacher, the chances of you delivering are much higher than if you are just a trained teacher. So it just makes sense.”
She said too that the concept would be pushed but was careful to point out that “like any other intervention that is strategic, it needs processing”.

Minister Henry noted too, that before such a policy comes into effect, criteria have to be properly thought out and then set to ensure that all parties are comfortable.
“The process will take time, because you don’t get a degree in a year or two, so we have to determine how we will be sending off and what criteria we select etc. It is a policy I believe will be very beneficial– that can boost the education sector once promptly thought out and rolled out. But I think by looking at it from any perspective, we would recognise there is value in that,” Minister Henry posited.