No child left behind policy in guyana

THE MINISTRY of Education is considering the reimplementation of its grade repetition programme against the automatic promotion of students who would have failed to satisfactorily complete an earlier grade. This was revealed during the handing over of the preliminary report of the Commission of Inquiry (COI) into the state of the education system.

Deputy Chief Education Officer, Donna Chapman, told the gathering of commissioners and other senior education officials that the education ministry has recognised the need to return to grade retention or grade repetition policy. She said that at the level of the education systems committee, the ministry has to relook at the retention policy to see what adjustments and upgrades could be made.

Chapman noted however, that based on the COI findings, consideration would be given to review the policy of the automatic promotion system.

The Automatic Promotion Policy, popularly called the “no child left behind” programme was promoted under the leadership of former Minister of Education, Shaik Baksh, in a bid to correct what was said to be adverse effects as a result of Grade Repetition initiative.

COI Chairman, Ed Caesar, has related however that stakeholders spoken to during the commission’s investigations have described the automatic promotion policy as a total failure.
Caesar said that both teachers and parents have agreed that if a child is not performing in a class they must not be automatically allowed to move on to the next grade.

He said that the policy is creating gaps where the child is unable to successfully achieve the basics from an earlier grade and is thus unable to build upon what it is they are supposed to know.
“So we haven’t crafted and created and solved that issue but we are moving the child forward. So the Child comes with problems here, some baggage the child brings here, problems here, more problems here and we can’t move forward. Then we ask ourselves why these young people are not performing. It’s because of our stupidity…” Caesar charged.

He opined that once those responsible for supervising, monitoring programmes and the progress of children are doing what they are supposed to and are acting to address the issue urgently and quickly then the automatic promotion and grade retention policies will have less of an impact than it currently has.

Personally, Caesar said, he is against anything that sounds remedial and urged that we ignore those directions since the task is to ensure that a comprehensive system is put in place and made to function effectively.

Caesar said that, “the important thing is not to promote inefficiencies,” by promoting students and widening the gap between each grade.

In 2014, then Education Minister, Priya Manickchand, had instructed public schools to scrap the automatic promotion policy. She had adjusted the system, and required students who score below the overall pass mark in more than 50 per cent of the subjects to repeat the grade.

Students who achieved less than the overall pass mark set by the school, and scored unacceptable marks in Mathematics and English were also being pinned to repeat the grade.

The DCEO said however that the Automatic Promotion Policy is still in effect.