EDUCATION Minister Shaik Baksh on Thursday underscored the need for effective leadership on the part of head teachers to maximize the potential of their teachers and to ensure better learning outcomes from students. He expressed these sentiments to head teachers of Region Four at the Diamond Secondary School. The meeting was the first of a series of similar engagements with head teachers throughout the country to outline the ministry’s thrust to improve education standards and delivery in 2011.
Baksh, accompanied by Chief Education Officer Olato Sam, and Technical Advisor Roopnarine Tewari, stressed that if head teachers demonstrate sound leadership of their school, ultimately the performance of students will improve and there will be less intervention from the regional education authorities.
He explained that this does not mean that there will be no supervision; rather it will empower head teachers to better handle some of the challenges relating to quality education delivery and students’ outcomes at their respective schools.
Foremost in attaining this level of management, the minister pointed out, is the need for school managers to embrace accountability, effective policy implementation, and regular feedback on the performance of both teachers and students under their supervision.
He also noted that though infrastructural matters of schools do not fall directly under his purview, as these are dealt with by the Ministry of Local Government (through the Regions), any school environment which is not conducive to learning is of concern to him.
He said that his ministry is working with the Ministry of Local Government to have these issues addressed, particularly as it relates to inadequate furniture for schools.
Baksh reported that more monies would be available in the national budget to address this problem and while some of the work will be done by private contractors, the technical institutes will also be involved in the building.
This development, he said, will enable students at the institutes to earn as they learn and will better help them to perfect their trade. All of these matters, Baksh said, could not be solved in 2011, but the objective is to ensure a significant portion is dealt with and that schools can operate as effective learning environments.
Schools in Georgetown, he said, have been least affected by these problems, notably because, they have an asset management plan and efforts will be made to have this system implemented in every region.
On a different note, the minister commended the teachers of Region Four for the creditable performance of students at the last Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations. The region obtained an overall pass rate of 73 percent and was placed second in the country.
Baksh said this performance must be improved in 2011, particularly in the areas of Mathematics and English.
At the primary level, the continuous assessment programme, the new literacy methodology which includes the literacy hour and accelerated literacy instruction periods, the Interactive Radio Instruction programme, the Fast-track Literacy programme and the National Grade Six Assessment are all currently being evaluated to correct areas of weaknesses and to ensure pupils are literate and numerate by the time they complete the primary cycle.
The Literacy Certification Assessment at Grade Four, which is critical to ensuring all students attain the prescribed literacy benchmarks, has also been introduced and will be conducted in June, 2011, for the first time.
The ministry has also institutionalized remediation programmes both at the primary and secondary levels to correct students’ weaknesses in Mathematics and English.
These interventions, Baksh said, are geared to bolster students’ performance at both the CSEC examinations and the National Grade Six Assessment, and all school managers and parents have to come on board to make these programmes deliver the intended results.     
In all of this, he noted that issues of better remuneration for teachers, improvement in teacher training, and the availability of more resources to aid learning cannot be excluded, and the Government has been looking into these matters.
The ministry is currently in negotiation with the Guyana Teachers Union for a better remuneration package for teachers; teachers can now obtain an Associate Degree in Education from the Cyril Potter College of Education in two years and move across to the University of Guyana to complete the degree programme in another two years. This is unlike the previous system where it took a teacher nine years to become a trained graduate with a degree in education. An education channel is expected to come on stream this year to further aid the learning process, and this will no doubt be supplemented by the Government’s move to provide every family with a laptop computer.