THE recommendation by the recently concluded Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into the education system for teachers to be licensed seemed to have passed silently, and understandably so, given the major news events in the past month.
The idea has been around for some time. It was first mooted by top education administrators a few years ago and never gained traction under the tenure of former Education Minister Priya Manickchand, under whose watch performance in the sector, across the board, experienced a decline.

Back then it was felt that licensing of teachers was the way to go in the near future, as it would ensure greater accountability on the part of teachers and enable government to get full value for money invested in the sector.
Education every year gets the largest slice of the national budget. The discussion was prompted after it was realised that while at the time about 70 per cent of teachers in the education system were formally trained, students’ results at the National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA) and the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations were unsatisfactory.

Quite interestingly, the view was proffered, even though little effort was made to properly evaluate teachers in the school system, which from all indications is a major cause for the undesirable results. It is no secret that the education system has a mixed bag of teachers. There are those who give their all for their charges to succeed; they are those who try; and then there are others who go through the motions.

A commonly accepted opinion then was that a strong system of evaluation was needed to hold all teachers to book for their performance in the classroom. The system envisioned would have also seen all teachers in the public school system undergoing some form of mandatory professional upgrade in order for their licences to be renewed. And these professional upgrade programmes would have been offered by the National Centre for Educational Resource Development (NCERD) and the University of Guyana (UG).
These, among other measures, educators had felt would have played an instrumental role in shoring up students’ performance at all levels of examination and enable government to get a “bang for the buck” its pours into education.

It is heartening to know that this progressive idea has not disappeared into oblivion and was among the recommendations of the Education CoI to fix the many faults in the education system.
The CoI report was quick to note that implementation of a licensing system for teachers would ensure greater discipline and management of educators, and would require certain adjustments in the education system.

It stated thusly: “This will require a complete rethink on how teachers are trained, certified, appraised, managed and disciplined. Every teacher should have an incentive to maintain his or her licence to teach.”
And importantly, it pointed out that consideration should also be given for the renewal of such licence on a five-year basis, once “certain criteria for professional development, mental and physical assessment are fulfilled.”

Much work would be required before implementation of such a programme. And given the current state of things, if the Ministry of Education does decide to accept the recommendation, it might take some time before the licensing programme is implemented. Notwithstanding this, the Ministry of Education must also not be unmindful of resistance to change from players in the education system. As such, it would be more than useful for the ministry to consult the Guyana Teachers Union (GTU) in every step of the implementation process. At the end of the day, all must have a say in building a better education system.