GUYANA’S education system is designed to create a conducive environment to produce brilliant young minds that are innovative and visionary. This is according to President, Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali, who recently hosted a simple ceremony at the Office of the President in honour of School of the Nations’ student, John McGrath. The Nations’ student was officially presented with the Cambridge Learners Award for his extraordinary performance. McGrath was awarded the prize and title of the world’s Top Student for Cambridge International Advanced Subsidiary (AS) English Language after he was successful in obtaining 99 marks out of a maximum of 100 in the June 2021 examinations. He became the first Guyanese to top a Cambridge AS examination.

This is no small achievement, especially when seen against the highly competitive nature of the examination involving over one million students from across 136 countries.

Guyana is known to have brilliant students who have done themselves and their country proud. Guyanese students have consistently won the top awards at the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) examinations, both at the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) and at the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations (CAPE) levels. In fact, Queens College was recently adjudged by the CXC as the top secondary school in the Caribbean for having produced on a consistent basis students who excelled at the regional examinations.

This is indeed a feather in the cap in the education system of Guyana, especially when seen against the background of Guyana at one time being at the bottom of the performance ladder in the entire Caribbean. It is an established fact that under the PNC regime, Guyana’s education system was underperforming to the extent that we were ranked as the worst performing country in terms of education attainment levels, both at the national and regional levels. It is a lasting shame on the then regime that the education system failed an entire generation of young people due to severe underfunding and mismanagement of the sector by the PNC regime.

It was not until the PPP/C administration assumed office on October 5, 1992 that the decline in education standards was halted and the attainment level of students began to progressively improve to a point where Guyanese students are once again taking the regional spotlight. For several consecutive years Guyanese students topped the Caribbean in several subject areas including the overall best student.

The PPP/C administration must be commended for placing education as a top national priority. As pointed out by President Ali, education is pivotal for national development. According to the President, “every Guyanese person, irrespective of the region in which they live, irrespective of their ethnic or religious background, would have an equal opportunity and stake in the development of our country and resulting prosperity. And how are we doing this? How we are doing this is by rolling out universal access to world class education as a centerpiece of personal upliftment and empowerment.”

Experience has shown that countries that invest heavily in education tend to leap-frog to higher levels of economic development as several of the Asian economies have demonstrated. The development of human capital is globally recognised as a critical variable in the modernisation process. It is for this reason that the PPP/C administration has been putting so much emphasis on the development of its human resources, especially at this stage in our development when the country is experiencing unprecedented levels of economic growth.

President Ali, in congratulating the young McGrath, said that he is looking forward to his development and would like, in the future, to see his name beside “global articles and writings that are celebrated”.

The President also took the opportunity to commend the School of the Nations and indicated that the government and the school have recently been collaborating on a number of initiatives involving different agencies.

This is indeed the way to go. Education delivery cannot be the responsibility of the government alone. There has to be a partnership between the public sector and private providers of education services, as the President correctly alluded to.