EVERY year students sitting various academic examinations look forward, with much anticipation, for the results. For these students, particularly those who felt they went above and beyond to succeed, this is a tense period, given its potential to define and significantly influence their future.

Families, educators/teachers, government and loved ones too look forward in anticipation as results, one way or the other reflect their investment in the child, the country’s achievements and ranking. This year, 12, 684 students sat the Caribbean Secondary Examination Certificate (CSEC). Congratulations to all the students who stayed the course through secondary education and wrote the examinations. Special congratulations are extended to our highflyers for proving what hard work can do, and being role models for their peers.
The Ministry of Education has announced that Guyana recorded a 63.8 percent pass rate. No doubt the ministry will find it worthwhile to engage in diagnostic analyses of each subject and overall performance, looking for weaknesses and strengths to improve on the percentage. Given the CSEC’s grading system, 63.8 percent shows Guyana has work to do, though this year reflects marginal improvement on the 63.39 percent scored in 2016.
Examination is not easy but at the same time it should not be ignored that each student has unique God-given abilities. Navigating this is an education system where ours has been repeatedly critiqued and condemned for falling short, its importance cannot be minimised. There will never be a one-size fits all, for while some may be what is considered academically inclined, others my be technically, vocationally, and otherwise bent.
Providing an education system that caters to the unique talent(s) of each child is no easy feat, equally challenging as it is in staffing the public schools and retaining teachers whose skills are also being sought in a competitive and rivalling private school system, though all-out efforts must be made to successfully climb to the highest height. The importance of students’ educational development vis a vis the nation’s developmental agenda, which ought to factor in the skills needed across the spectrum, is also important in shaping the education policy. In this entire process the African proverb “it takes a village to raise a child” cannot be ignored, for equally important outside of the family is the wider society providing mentorship, as no child must feel he or she is being left behind because a system did not cater for his or her abilities/potentials.
Guyana continues to underperform in basic subjects, namely, Mathematics, English ‘A’ and English Literature. It may require, via diagnostic analyses, to exam teaching techniques, past and present, domestic and foreign, that would attract and retain the interest of students in these areas. When our students sit the CSEC, their intellectual work compete with their Caribbean counterparts and where universality in marking techniques is enshrined, the entire society has to put its proverbial shoulders to the wheel to ensure the country’s grade improves. Having said that, it’s also useful to look at putting systems in place not only to honour and celebrate the achievements of our highflyers, but also to retain them for the nation’s development, as no society can develop when its best and brightest feel the need to flee.