In the aftermath of slavery, the rudiments of a formal education were introduced to Guyanese, after being denied to them during the centuries of their enslavement. While the curriculum of what we would now call “primary schools” was purveyed by the Christian Church, as well as “Government schools”, the teachers of the former were paid by the State in a “dual control” arrangement. With all its disabilities, the colonial state recognised that education was necessary in the new dispensation – if only to teach “moral values”.
Secondary schools were introduced in 1844 with Queens College but served the children of the colonial elite. By the end of the 19th century, several private secondary schools had also been founded. When the “dual system” was abolished in the 1960’s, under the recently bequeathed “internal self-government”, the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Administration extended the reach of educational opportunities when it built several secondary schools across the country and launched the University of Guyana, on a part-time basis at the Queens College facility. In the post-WWII era, education was acknowledged a prerequisite for any country seeking to lift itself out of poverty and underdevelopment.
By this time, Guyana had earned an enviable reputation for producing students of exceptional ability in almost all fields of endeavour, including politics. In fact, such was the cachet of education that one social scientist insisted the Caribbean practiced “doctor politics”. In 1976, the People’s National Congress (PNC) Government, which had announced its “socialist” orientation two years earlier, took control of institutions of learning at all levels. In its 1980 Constitution, Article 27 declared: “Every citizen has the right to free education from nursery to university as well as at non-formal places where opportunities are provided for education and training.”
The imposition of the neo-liberal prescriptions of the 1989 IMF loan “conditionalities”, which privatised a host of state functions; however, reversed these progressive educational policies. Fees were reintroduced at UG while private primary, secondary and other schools of training were permitted to be reintroduced. In 2000, there were wide-ranging constitutional change but the right to free education “from nursery to University” was left intact, suggesting that while the right was not justiciable it remained as an aspirational normative value for the Government.
And this brings us to the present contretemps that is roiling the educational system in two areas: the unilateral 35 per cent increase in tuition fees at UG and the imposition of VAT on tuition fees to private schools by the PNC-led A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) coalition. Both initiatives appear totally tone deaf to the meaning and import of Article 27. While it may be argued that there needs to be fees imposed to secure tertiary education, the policies could have been more nuanced to take into consider the needs of the citizenry and of the country. For instance, in view of the Government’s own emphasis on the need for education for the country’s development goals, options such as “personal needs based” and “country need based” fee waivers could have been considered.
In the light of revelations that Ministers earning 10 times the minimum wage awarded scholarships totalling 14 times the annual minimum wage, it is difficult to justify denying students from minimum-wage families the opportunity to attend university. The country is allowing the talent of more than one half of its youths to be dissipated. The imposition of VAT on tuition to private schools is even more mystifying.
Private schools returned because of the failure of the “free” Government schools, which were not even “free” because of the extraordinary amount of private “lessons” students were forced to endure to succeed at externally set examinations. On VAT, the Administration somehow does not seem to comprehend that VAT will be borne by the students and not the schools and schools would be breaking the law if they were to pay the student’s VAT from their income.
The PNC-led APNU/AFC is not only betraying the developmental needs of the country but the PNC’s historic position on education.
