Georgetown : Within a matter of months the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate Examination (CSEC) is scheduled to be undertaken and drastic improvements are anticipated given the visionary move by Education Minister, Ms Priya Manickchand, to direct more teaching efforts into the areas of Maths and English.
But while the task was entrusted into the hands of teachers to better their teaching capabilities, having been equipped with the necessary tools, Minister Manickchand has asserted that the onus is not only on teachers to help realize improvements at the upcoming examination. “What do we expect of our students? We expect you at this time to be disciplined; we expect you to understand that you should to be putting all of your attention and focus into your school work…particularly in the subject areas of Maths and English but do not neglect the other subjects.”
“It has to be a focused thing…if you’re accustomed to watching television shows up to about two hours in the night you have to decide that you’re going to cut that out. Your parents can’t do it for you, the government can’t do it for you and certainly the teachers can’t do it for you…You have to make this choice.”
The Minister pointed out that the ability to choose a profession, be it a doctor, lawyer, accountant, teacher, police man or even a home maker, can only be had if students are able to pass their subjects.
“Without an education your life is going to be hard, people are going to feel they can do what they want, treat you how they want, you’ll have no choices and you will have to stay where you are because you did not get the grades you were looking for…So you have to decide what kind of life you are looking for,” the Minister warned.
Students according to the Minister must recognize their role even as she pointed to the fact that parents have been playing their part as well by making sacrifices in some instances just to put food on the table.
According to Chief Education Officer, Mr Olato Sam, although the pilot programme to improve Maths and English at CSEC started with just about 30 schools, a few others have since requested to join bringing the total to 36. The introduction of the ambitious programme, he noted, has channeled heightened awareness which has generated greater general interest on the part of students, teachers and parents. He related that the Ministry has been conducting a number of workshops and efforts were recently made to conduct an entire CSEC mock examination to ascertain the efficacy of the programme.
According to Sam the result of that examination is still being analyzed but “things are going according to plan…we are going to continue to monitor things but we expect to get the desired results.”
The improvement programme is being dubbed a four-prong partnership involving teachers, students, parents and the government. Earlier this year Government approved a $85.7 M contract for the procurement of items to boost students’ learning. These included CXC General Maths Book I and II, the Self-Study Guide for CXC, the collection of revision DVDs, the combined pass papers from 2008 to 2011, Model Solutions to difficult answers, Combined Solution for everything in addition to a geometry set, graph paper and a scientific calculator which have been distributed to the participating schools.
Each student has been provided with the procured materials and teachers have been provided with individual syllabuses and a collection of the package to allow them to effectively work with each student.
Minister Manickchand upon assuming office last year sought to amplify the need for an urgent improvement in the subject areas of English and Mathematics countrywide. The latter mentioned subject area saw a significant decline reflective in a below 35 per cent pass rate last year thus suggesting that there is a need for even more attention, according to the Minister. She speculated that the existing low mathematics grades may very well be linked to the fact that the confidence level of the country as a whole may be equally low and observed that this dilemma is not unique to Guyana as it is very evident the Region over. “Some of us are feel almost beaten because we do so poorly in the area (Maths) and some of us who stop to recognize that it is not Guyana alone use it as an excuse that ‘Oh! Is not we alone! Is everybody doing bad and so it is alright for us to do badly’…I am saying we don’t have to do badly.”
However, despite the evident poor performance rate, Manickchand said that the Ministry has recognized that there is capacity within the system to help foster improved performance thus the introduction of the strategic programme.
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