THE results of the National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA) have once again demonstrated that our children are doing well at examinations, both at the national and regional levels.
The most recent results at the NGSA have shown a positive trend of enhanced student-attainment levels in all the regions of Guyana, including at the rural and hinterland levels. The results indicate not only the increasingly competitive nature of the exams, but also a much better geographic spread of student-attainment levels.
This speaks well of the efforts made by the PPP/C administration to make the delivery of quality education more accessible to children all across the country. The performance gap between urban and rural schools is closing, as is also the case between coastland and hinterland schools.
It is a fact that hinterland schools were underperforming relative to coastland schools due to the neglect of the education-delivery system in those communities by the PNC regime during its 28 years of undemocratic rule.
Thankfully, all of that has changed since the return of democratic rule on October 5, 1992. One of the main priority areas of the PPP/C administration when it took power in 1992 was to reverse the decline in student attainment both at the national and regional levels. Since then, the country has been making steady progress in terms of student attainment.
What we are seeing in effect is a continuing democratisation of the education-delivery system to children all across the country. Gone are the days when top performers came only from a limited number of city schools. There is a much better spread of results encompassing not only urban and rural schools, but also public and private schools.
The democratization of education access is also seen in the measures taken by the administration to universalize secondary education, making it possible for all students, regardless of their performance at the NGSA to access discrete secondary education.
This is in sharp contrast to what happened in the past when more than 50 per cent of the students who sat the then Secondary Schools Entrance Examinations were sent to community high schools or to the tops of primary schools.
The school drop-out rates from those institutions were particularly high as the vast majority of those children were denied the opportunity to write the Caribbean Secondary School Certificae Examination (CSEC).
The implementation of the Secondary School Reform Programme (SSRP) initiated by the PPP/C administration and the several measures taken to increase the secondary school cohort have impacted significantly in terms of student performance at the post-primary levels.
Only recently, several contracts were signed for the construction of new secondary schools, including a new school in Kwebanna in Region One, which when completed will be one of the most advanced in the hinterland.
This is not to suggest that challenges in terms of education delivery do not persist, especially in the critical subject areas of Language and Mathematics.
The good news, as pointed out by Education Minister Priya Manickchand, students’ performance in Mathematics at the NGSA have shown an overall improvement.
It is quite obvious that the investment in the education sector by the PPP/C administration is paying dividends which augurs well from the standpoint of human-capital formation so critical for overall national development.
A whopping sum of 94.4 billion dollars is allocated to the education sector in this year’s budget estimates amounting to $237,000 per child, a more than twofold increase compared to that allocated by the previous APNU+AFC regime.
All of these achievements are consistent with the overarching goal of a new society as adumbrated by President Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali, one in which no individual will be left behind and where all Guyanese all be given the opportunity to develop to the full limit of their potential.
