— Chief Education Officer

GOVERNMENT has signalled its intention to use technology to address the disparity between hinterland and coastland education, especially since the hinterland continues to perform satisfactorily at the NGSA.

Over the years the coastland has and continues to produce exceptional results at the NGSA examinations while the hinterland regions, particularly Regions Eight and Nine, only manage to perform satisfactorily.
This year, the top performer for Region Eight, Lotasha Stanislaus of Monkey Mountain Primary, secured 477 marks while the top performer for Region Nine, Nikolai Kissoon of Aranaputa Primary obtained 499.

Although the students tried their best and performed well, coastal regions had passes of 500 marks and above.
“We have been trying to bridge the gap by rolling out hinterland development projects… but we have to find a way to significantly close the gap and we believe that technology is one way to bridge the gap between the coast and hinterland,” said the Chief Education Officer (CEO), Marcel Hutson, in his response to questions on the topic at the announcement of the NGSA results on Thursday.

Although the Ministry of Education has been consistently training teachers, the CEO believes that they have to look at ways to use technology to ‘touch’ the hinterland areas.
Last year, the ministry established a “smart classroom” at the National Centre for Educational Resource Development (NCERD). The classroom has since been used to conduct training programmes with students, teachers and even regional officials from across the country.

“What we need to do now is develop a schedule to ensure that everyone benefits from the output of the smart classroom,” he said, adding that the ministry intends to budget for more smart classrooms which would be established at secondary schools on the coast and in the hinterland regions.
The ministry had discovered that the hinterland regions lack quality teachers but, the smart classroom would allow teachers, trainers and even students to network with each other and learn at the same pace.

Hutson said the process seems easy but it is not, especially since students and teachers find it hard to access schools because of the topography of the hinterland communities.
Despite the odds, Education Minister Nicolette Henry said they will fill the gap by using technology and continuously training teachers.

The minister gave the assurance 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.

It was reported sometime back that 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 targeted mathematics specifically, it should be noted that additional focus was placed on the other core areas: English, science and social studies.

The study conducted served as a baseline and proved effective in bridging the existing gap.
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.