MOE Strategic Plan 2003-2007

Part 2: Mission, Strategic Issues & Priorities

As redefined during the SWOT sessions referred to in Part I, the mission of the Ministry of Education and the education sector of Guyana as a whole is as follows:

To ensure that all citizens of Guyana, regardless of age, race or creed, physical or mental disability, are given the best possible opportunity to achieve their full potential through equal access to quality education as defined by the standards and norms outlined by the Ministry of Education.

The commitment to quality and equity in education, with no barriers in access to anyone, is clear in this declaration, which emphasises that not only social and economic, but physical and mental barriers, must be overcome.

For the Ministry of Education, education is defined as more than an instrumental activity, for example - to support greater national development or reduce poverty. It has value on its own. It is regarded as the main way to help each human being to achieve his/her highest potential. Education should be able to give the nation’s citizens the necessary knowledge, skills, and values to lead happy and productive lives. On the basis of the education received, they should love their country and respect the diversity of its ethnic, religious and political traditions. They should adhere to the ideals and practice of democracy, justice, peace, diversity and accountability

In addition, although children are, and should be, the main target of educational efforts, the adult population and mainly the young adults, should be given opportunities to learn.

Finally, it is the responsibility of the Ministry of Education to define the quality of education to which each person in the system should have access at each time and place.

The Mission Statement presented here is obviously stated in very broad terms and should be reviewed during the implementation period of the strategic plan. Nevertheless, it is very relevant, and all the concepts and actions included in the strategic plan for 2003-2007 must be considered in the light of the Ministry’s mission, and contribute to its achievement.

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B. THE STRATEGIC ISSUES AS GROUPED

After the strategic issues were identified, they were grouped into six areas of concern to facilitate analysis. It should be noted that a strategic issue is not necessarily an objective, but a challenge in the future of the organisation, a fundamental issue that needs to be dealt with. As grouped, the issues are as follows:

1. Quality Issues

1. To provide better ECE.
2. To develop a more relevant curriculum at all levels of the education system.
3. To make tertiary education more relevant and capable of contributing to the development of Guyana.
4. To achieve significantly better levels of literacy and numeracy among students.
5. To define standards for inputs, processes and outcomes.
6. To improve infrastructure and equipment.

2. Equity Issues

1. To improve the quality of education in the hinterland and riverain areas.
2. To attain universal access to secondary education.
3. To accelerate the mainstreaming/inclusion of persons with special needs into the education system.

3. Social Issues

1. To increase stakeholders’ level of participation and commitment.
2. To increase the level of respect for and tolerance of diversity.

4. Human Resources Issues

1. To produce competent teachers for the system and give them better support.
2. To reduce the loss of valuable human resources in the system.

5. Management Issues

1. To improve the managerial capabilities of the MoE.
2. To decentralise the management of the system.

6. Support Issues

1. To obtain government and societal support for the MoE at the central, regional and local levels.
2. To obtain adequate financial resources.

There are significant similarities and even convergences between the MoE strategic issues outlined above and those identified in the GPRSP, which was approved in October 2001 after its own extensive participatory process of consultation. The GPRSP signals education as one of the major components of poverty reduction and again establishes it as a national priority. Critically, the document presents education not only as a means of increasing the human capital of Guyana, but also as part of the definition of poverty itself. As it explains:

Poverty is multi-faceted. It manifests itself in low and uneven levels of income and consumption, physical insecurity, poor health, low levels of education, disempowerment, high levels of unemployment, and social and geographical isolation.

Given this conceptual framework, education is treated not only as a tool for development or for decreasing poverty, but as a goal in its own right. If the people of Guyana are going to defeat poverty, the GPRSP argues, one of the necessary elements is to raise the level of formal and non-formal education of the population.

The findings of the consultations held during the formulation of the GPRS were essentially the same as those emerging from the consultation process held under the auspices of the MOE. Since the processes took place at the same time, making it impossible for either to take account of the conclusions of the other, it is an indication of the validity of both series of consultations that their results so closely correspond. Table 5 outlines similarities and convergences between the strategic issues they identify.

Table 5: Similarities and convergences between the GPRS AND MOE strategic issues

GPRSP	MOE
1. Curricula Reforms	To develop a more relevant curriculum at all levels of the education system.
2. Improving access to and attendance at school	To improve the quality of education in the hinterland and riverain areas. To attain universal access to secondary education. To accelerate the mainstreaming/inclusion of persons with special needs into the education system.
3. Teacher training/ancillaryand emoluments	To produce competent teachers for the system and give them better support. To reduce the loss of valuable humanresources in the system.
4. Reducing overcrowding andincreasing allocations for maintenance	To obtain adequate financial resources. To improve infrastructure and equipment.
5. Targeting functional literacyamong out of school youth	To achieve significantly better levels of literacyand numeracy among students. To provide better ECE.
6. Targeted subsidies for the poor	None
7. Skills Training and Employment Programme	To make tertiary education more relevant and capable of contributing to the development of Guyana.
8. Strengthening the MOE.	To increase stakeholders’ level of participation and commitment. To improve the managerial capabilities of the MOE. To decentralise the management of the system. To obtain government and societal support for the MOE at the central, regional and local levels. To obtain adequate financial resources.To define standards for inputs, processes and outcomes.

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C. PRIORITISING THE PRIORITIES

All the strategic issues and strategies identified in the MoE process should be considered priorities, not only because very large groups of people in Guyana and its educational system understand them as important, but because they are part of the integrated effort that the Government will have to make to respond adequately to the needs of the population and the country. Nevertheless, they must be prioritised, for two basic reasons:

1. Not all the strategic issues have the same level of urgency or can be addressed in the short run. Preference may be given, for example, to issues which affect a significant part of the population, have tremendous implications for national development, or are more likely to produce the desired impacts in a shorter time or at a lesser cost. On the other hand, action may be postponed on issues which demand more research before they can be effectively addressed, or for which special resources that are not now available to the country are needed.

2. The managerial capability and financial means of the system are limited. Attention must therefore be paid to how much can be done in the period covered by the plan and what resources are available to the system to make and sustain improvements in its quality.

In order to correctly establish the priorities among the issues, it is also necessary to understand how they are interrelated. Some strategic issues are instrumental, that is, action on them is a pre-requisite for action on other strategic issues. For example, through a process of consultation, the Planning Unit Task Team identified two pre-requisites for considering the other strategic issues in education. In the previous section, these were referred to as “support issues” – governmental and societal support for the MoE at all levels; and adequate financial resources. While these pre- requisites are partly outside the control of the Ministry of Education and are not properly speaking educational matters, they have major significance for the achievement of the MoE’s goals. Considerable attention would therefore have to be paid to them if the strategic issues are to be effectively addressed.

To take all these concerns into account while safeguarding the possibility of action on all strategic issues, it was necessary to identify the relationship between and among the six groups of strategic issues; and the impact that action on one issue would have on another.

The following figures show the linkages among the issues.


Figure 1: The hierarchy of priorities

Notes
1. The MoE has a high number of strategic issues because education is the type of sector which is expected by the population to deliver services.
2. Behind the conception of the plan is a notion of flexibility and a hierarchy that has to be properly understood, especially by those who will be involved in its implementation and later evaluation.
3. There are three levels of strategic issues according to their nature and how they are embedded in the logical sequence of the plan.

Notes:
1. All government ministries must be aware and supportive of the role education is playing in the strategy for national development. Agencies like the MoF, the TSC, and the PSM must recognise the MoE as the driving force in the sector without resigning their functions and obligations, and MoE must put systems in place to make collaboration easier.
2. MoE needs an enhanced administrative framework in order to access and effectively utilise the increased resources provided by government from national and international sources.
3. To become more effective, the system must develop its managerial capabilities and achieve higher levels of effectiveness and efficiency. The scarce resources of time and money must be spent wisely and in a timely manner. Targets must be clearly defined so that monitoring and evaluation is easier, allowing for greater accountability.

Notes:
1. All the above issues are important, but as means to achieve better academic outcomes.
2. Since teachers are an essential element in transforming the schools, they must be better supported. The system may not be able to avoid all losses due to migration, but it must quantify the losses, prepare to find substitutes, and design a strategy to reduce losses to the lowest level possible. This is another way of trying to increase the capacity of the teaching force since it is mostly the better prepared teachers who are leaving.
3. Policies and academic and non-academic norms, including performance norms, need to be clearly defined and in the minds of all involved in the system.
4. An increased level of participation is necessary for working to address all other issues.
5. Better support for the teachers also has to come from the Government and education administrators, with greater monetary and non-monetrary rewards, including accelerated promotion, for the better and more committed ones.
6. Standards must define the infrastructure and equipment that each educational institution needs to have, and they must be understood as a right of teachers, children, families and communities.

Notes:
1. Improved levels of literacy and numeracy are the central strategic issue of the plan, around which everything else revolves and to which everything else is connected.
2. Better ECE is the starting point of the educational effort and a necessity for achieving higher levels of literacy and numeracy. Guyana also has international commitments to better ECE.
3. USE will contribute to raising literacy and numeracy: today, basic education includes some secondary education (for the Caribbean it is defined as five years).
4. More relevant curriculum at all levels, including tertiary, is a necessary component of achieving all other gains.
5. More respect for diversity is a national problem and a mandatory part of a more relevant curriculum.
6. Improvement of education in the hinterland and riverain regions and mainstreaming students with special needs, where possible, are both major aspects of equity, and related to the other quality issues.

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