THERE are numerous, well-ventilated disparities within the education sector of Guyana. It can be argued, however, that the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, and its resulting pandemic exacerbated those disparities and disadvantaged the nation’s children even further.

This past week, the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) released this year’s results for the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examination and the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE). The results of this year’s National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA) were also released, just a day before.

Yearly, the release of these results allows for a microscope to be placed over the education sector and its various components, at least while ‘story’ is still topical. The challenges hinterland and rural students face, largely due to the geographical spaces they are in, represent one of those prominent disparities.

According to Statista, a German company specialising in market and consumer data, Guyana had an internet penetration rate of 37.33 percent in 2017. What that means was that less than 40 per cent of Guyana’s population, then, had access to and were using the internet. Datareportal, an online platform which summarises third-party data to illustrate trends and provide insights, indicated that as of January 2020, 55 per cent of the population or approximately 430,000 persons were using the internet. Comparatively, the Caribbean Region has a 60 per cent internet-penetration rate, while South America has a 72 per cent rate.

The data made available did not provide a breakdown of internet penetration via geographical regions. It is well ventilated, however, that rural and hinterland communities are challenged by the lack of ICT infrastructure and services.

The coronavirus pandemic has prompted a paradigm shift in teaching and learning. Schools have been closed as part of the attempts to mitigate the spread and impact of the virus, thereby forcing novel pedagogical measures. Pedagogy in the virtual space is no longer that method of teaching that we are gradually working towards integrating into the schooling system. Virtual learning is challenging when you don’t have the infrastructure and resources to support it.

In the absence of quantitative data to guide decision analyses, I would like to present some qualitative information to further illustrate the challenges of pupils, students, and teachers in rural and hinterland communities.

A few months ago, when the CXC was still mulling over the format its examinations would take and how they would be administered, I managed to speak with two teachers in Aishalton, Region Nine, and one teacher from the Black Bush Polder, Region Six.

In Region Nine, the two teachers explained that virtual learning was a challenge because students and teachers alike did not have adequate or effective smart devices to engage in learning and they did not have a fixed and dependable internet source. These challenges were compounded by the reality that many of the students attending the schools in the region hailed from satellite communities and were living in dorms, at or close to the school’s compound. With the closure of schools, back into those far-flung areas they were forced to go.

One teacher told me that she tried to organise classes via WhatsApp; she would share photographs of the work she wanted her students to complete and would collect that and review it from the students. Aside from students not having internet access at all, many of the students were not enthused about ‘WhatsApp classes’ and were not responsive. Instead, this teacher had to make worksheets and travelled great distances to take it to her students. But even that was a challenge, as she didn’t have enough for each student, and was forced to circulate the few she had. In Black Bush Polder, the same lack of internet access and the need for printed worksheets were the same.

I believe that occurrences such as these undermine the education of pupils and students, and frankly, as a student myself, I would not be the least bit motivated to learn anything. Now, imagine the strain of having to write these ‘high-stakes’ examinations such as the NGSA, CSEC, and CAPE under these increasingly frustrating circumstances. It is just not fair.

While a friend and I were rejoicing this past week that our alma maters, the Stella Maris and North Georgetown Primary schools (‘de avenue’ schools) secured the top spots for the NGSA, we also recognised that fewer hinterland students occupied the top positions.

Though the information we were discussing was only the top one per cent of the country, my friend expressed her dismay at this, voicing her opinion that the COVID-19 pandemic had exacerbated those pre-existing challenges for students in the hinterland. I am inclined to believe that this was the case, as I am not aware of any large-scale intervention fostered to provide a nexus for those disparities in education.

These pupils and students will go down in history as the set of learners who wrote these ‘high-stakes’ examinations under extremely disorienting and challenging times. And for me, that, more than anything else, is what we should be proud of. It is up to people like me who write, to highlight their plight and hope that people who can do things will foster data-driven interventions to attenuate those disparities.