Yet again, Guyana has dominated the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate Examinations (CSEC) awards. This year (2013) Guyana won five of the eight awards including: most outstanding overall student, most outstanding student in humanities, most outstanding student in sciences, most outstanding student in business studies and most outstanding student in technical vocational.
It should also be noted that within the last decade, Guyana has been consistently winning CSEC awards because of the excellent performances recorded by students. In 2012, the country won four of the eight regional awards.
This achievement is quite commendable and we wish to take this opportunity to applaud the efforts of all those who had a role to play in the successes of our students, including the Education Ministry, parents and the students themselves who have made tremendous sacrifices by putting in many hours of hard work. When our students perform well in any field, whether it is in academic, sport or the performing arts, it is the entire country that gets the recognition.
It is hoped that these students will continue to keep the Guyana flag flying high as they seek to further their studies in various fields. For most of them, this is just one of the first milestones in life, as they will go on to become professionals in their own fields. They have certainly made themselves, their families, their communities and their country proud.
Moreover, we hope that this quality of excellence will serve as benchmarks so that all students of Guyana can aspire to excel academically. The success stories of the various top students were published widely in the local press and we were told about how many of them were able to overcome various adversities and triumph in the end. These experiences will certainly help to motivate students all over the country, that no matter what challenges they face, they can overcome them.
More importantly, these results prove that the various interventions and investments being made by government to raise the level of performances of our students are paying off. Recently, Education Minister Priya Manickchand had cause to respond strongly to suggestions made by Opposition Leader David Granger that there is a crisis facing the local education sector. Granger had called for a commission of inquiry to examine the problems facing the education sector and make recommendations.
While the ministry should not dismiss the concerns raised by Granger, we do not believe that the problems facing the sector could justifiably be described as a ‘crisis’. As far as we are aware, the ministry had accepted that all is not well in the education sector and there is room for improvement in various fields.
It could be recalled that from the very onset of the announcement of the 2013 CSEC results, the ministry had said that it was dissatisfied with students’ performances in key subject areas such as mathematics and English. In fact, most of us would know that countries throughout the world are indeed struggling with mathematics and these include developed countries as well.
Not that we are justifying the poor results of students in these subject areas, but it would be unfair to conveniently ignore the steps the ministry has taken to address these deficiencies. For example, the ministry has introduced continuous professional development courses in English and mathematics for teachers; it has offered incentives for teachers who graduate from these courses and has also offered additional training for teachers in low-performing schools. Further, the ministry has prepared and presented a range of television programmes for students in maths and English.
While we must accept that there are certain challenges facing the education sector, it is necessary that we give credit whenever it is due. That being said, perhaps the opposition may want to consider seriously engaging the government and other key stakeholders on important national issues such as education. For too long, we have been focusing on the ‘problem’ and making unnecessary criticisms, rather than working towards finding a solution.
