Despite increasing scores on the National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA), we must dismantle this pernicious colonial system
Dear Editor,
The Ministry of Education deserves credit for gains in the recent NGSA. We celebrate any and all gains and lament those areas needing progress. Notwithstanding the gains, we must move quickly to revamp, reimagine, reform, retool, redesign, and reinvent our education system.
Following the release of the 2025 results, there has been a flurry of comments calling for the abolishing of the NGSA. This is hopeful, as mindsets are beginning to change. Those who want to preserve this current system of privilege and status would resist change, and those whose children are victims of the NGSA would applaud change. In its new Education Sector Plan (2025-2030), our Ministry of Education can be the leaders of change and a model for Caricom if it sets out a transition timeline of probably 3 years to transform and redesign our approach to school assignment. This reform cannot wait! We must act with a sense of urgency.
Comments by “Eyewitness” (“Moving up… in education?”, June 27, 2025) in the Guyana Times make our case for abandonment of the NGSA. The Stabroek News, which has been giving good coverage of education, also makes that case. (See “Elation, despair and the National Grade Six Assessment”, June 28, 2025).
“Eyewitness” did not mince words. That columnist said, “Well, it’s that time of the year once again!! That time when we became the only country on the planet to go ga-ga over the scores of our 11-year-olds in the exams that allow them to move from primary to secondary school. If you think your eyewitness is exaggerating, just tell him in which other country such scores make it to the FRONT PAGES OF EVERY NATIONAL NEWSPAPER!! See?? So, what does that mean? Simply, that in the education field – even though we came out of colonialism sixty years ago – we’re still at the lowest stage of development when it was a big thing for our children to get into “Queen’s College”!!”
Eyewitness continued, “After slavery – as a mark of great progress – primary schools were launched by the Church – and funded by the government. … Queen’s College had been created as the first secondary school just after slavery was abolished for the sons of the lily-white rulers – including some of their coloured ones from their slave concubines. Bishops ’soon followed for their daughters. Much later a “Common Entrance” exam was launched in the primary schools for a small number of students in 4th Standard across the country to earn a “scholarship” to Queen’s or Bishops’!! And this is where we’ve been stuck ever since – even though secondary schools have been built in every community!! That doesn’t mean there haven’t been changes – but the fact we’re all so excited about who will get into “Queen’s” means that nothing’s really changed!”
So, if we get rid of the NGSA, what do we do with the top 6 schools? The students who usually get placed at the top 6 schools are mostly “academically gifted” or “gifted and talented”. They are the “in spite” of children who will do well regardless of poor teachers or poor schools. They are self-driven, capable of accelerated learning and advanced learning. They learn at a faster pace, and they can do college work earlier. We can convert the top 6 schools to “special focus” academies and ask only those students who want to get in to do an optional admissions test to be admitted to those special programmes.
For instance, we can create more “speciality” schools such as the recently opened St George’s School of Science. There can be an Academy of Medicine/Health Sciences, an Academy of Law, a STEM Academy or School of Science, Math and Engineering, a School of the Arts, an Oil and Gas Academy, or “Early College” High Schools. All these academies can award both a high school diploma and an associate degree at graduation.
This will require our education designers and experts to create new high school models. With the ongoing building of new schools and a new push to upgrade all existing high schools, students can automatically attend better-quality neighbourhood schools.
Additionally, as in the USA, we can implement “enrichment” programmes for all those “academically gifted” students in every high school. That will require the Cyril Potter College of Education Campus and its centres to introduce a course on how to teach gifted children.
So, let’s start the conversations and brainstorming and get public input on how we may restructure our education system. (See “Scrapping NGSA will be a tipping point for education reform in Guyana”, KN, Apr 27, 2025).
