The results of the NGSA were announced last Friday, and all the newspapers’ headlines blared: “Significant improvements in Science and Maths scores”. It is clear we are looking at how full the glass was, rather than how empty; but where our future is concerned — and these students are our future — we must be realistic. In Maths, for instance, while the pass rate may have improved, we cannot ignore the fact that SIXTY PERCENT of the 15,273 candidates who sat the Maths exam did not earn 50% of the marks. In other words, they failed by that basic metric. And so did FORTY-FIVE percent in Science, FORTY-ONE PERCENT in Social Studies, and THIRTY-FIVE percent in English.
While we congratulate, as we always do, the top 5% high-flyers – who will enter Queen’s College and the other “elite” Georgetown secondary schools, let us spare a thought for the average 48% of students – 6911 who frankly failed. Later, in September this year, we will be commemorating International Literacy Day (ILD), which was launched in November 1965 just as we, along with so many other colonies, were about to be granted independence. Repressed, in some instances for centuries, in terms of even basic education, many of these societies, including ours, had severe challenges in literacy, measured simply as the ability to read at a level to be functionally literate.
But what constitutes “literacy” in this “Digital Age”, which was born in the last half of a century? The UNESCO information brochure on ILD of 2017 succinctly described the latter: “Digital technologies, including the Internet, mobile phones, and all the other tools to manage information digitally, are fundamentally changing the way people live and work, learn and socialise. This transformation is taking place at record speed with the rapid advancement and expansion of technologies.” The annual releases of smart devices not only enhance video, graphics, and text production and transmission, but seamlessly integrate their operations with other devices, so that even the young can always be connected to the rest of the world even without their phone.
Our policy makers in the education sector must realise that when it comes to using the tools of the Digital Age, our children are like the children of immigrants in a new land – they will be the first to understand the new technology, while their parents are still stuck looking backwards. What this means, however, is that there is an opportunity right now to leapfrog our educational backwardness and jump right into the Digital Age.
What are these? According to the Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills Consortium, success in the 21st century requires mastery of the following critical skills: “information literacy, creativity and innovation, collaboration, problem solving, communication, and responsible citizenship.” To expand briefly, to be “functionally literate” in the new dispensation, there is the need for students to be au fait with several “literacies”: scientific, economic, and technological; visual and information; multicultural and global awareness. Since we are now dealing potentially with the entire world, there will be the need to improve the effectiveness of our communication skills. This becomes even more vital because of the need to be able to work in teams where the members are spread in different parts of the globe. Collaboration and interpersonal skills have to be sharpened in this new interactive environment.
One of the more pressing needs for change in our pedagogy in Guyana will be the need to move away from the rote learning, which is unfortunately being emphasised in the NGSA in delivering an outdated curriculum. What is needed in this Digital Age is more inventive thinking outside the box, which can lead to designing, say, apps that can change the world without any huge amount of capital. But to do that, students would have to become more adaptable, and learn to manage complexity while on their own. The results of our NGSA demonstrate that we have much work to do.
