Guyana’s Pres­i­dent Dr Ir­faan Ali says the poor per­for­mance of Caribbean stu­dents in Math­e­mat­ics is a mat­ter of con­cern for re­gion­al lead­ers and that the mat­ter needs to be ful­ly ven­ti­lat­ed.

Last month, the Bar­ba­dos-based Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil (CXC) re­port­ed that on­ly 36 per cent of stu­dents across the re­gion re­ceived pass­ing grades for Math­e­mat­ics at the Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate (CSEC), a sev­en per­cent­age point de­crease com­pared to last year.

CXC’s Di­rec­tor of Op­er­a­tions, Dr Nicole Man­ning em­pha­sized the need for im­prove­ment in each ter­ri­to­ry.

Ad­dress­ing the com­mis­sion­ing of the new Yarrowkabra Sec­ondary School, Pres­i­dent Ali stat­ed that the mat­ter will be dis­cussed by re­gion­al lead­ers, even as he sug­gest­ed that de­clin­ing grades in Math­e­mat­ics might be due to the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic.

“The is­sue of Math­e­mat­ics has now cap­tured the at­ten­tion of every sin­gle head of state and prime min­is­ter in the re­gion, and it is now an agen­da for the Heads of Gov­ern­ment in CARI­COM. That is to tell you the is­sues and chal­lenges that we face,” Pres­i­dent Ali told the cer­e­mo­ny.

He said Bar­ba­dos’ Prime Min­is­ter, Mia Mot­t­ley, had re­cent­ly told him that she in­tend­ed to take the is­sue of Math to the next CARI­COM sum­mit slat­ed for Feb­ru­ary 2025 in Bridgetown, be­cause she be­lieved the re­gion was in a cri­sis in Math­e­mat­ics.

“It is not a Ja­maica is­sue, Bar­ba­dos is­sue, Trinidad is­sue or your Guyana is­sue. It has now be­come a col­lec­tive is­sue that we must ad­dress and here in Guyana, we have to be in­no­v­a­tive,” Dr Ali said.

Ac­cord­ing to the CXC re­sults, Guyana record­ed a CSEC Math­e­mat­ics’ pass rate of 31 per cent this year, com­pared to 34 per cent in 2023.

The Guyana Pres­i­dent won­dered whether the de­clin­ing rate of suc­cess was linked to the more than two-year long COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“Now al­so COVID, Math­e­mat­ics re­quired more di­rect con­tact, more group, more an­a­lyt­ics, more teach­ers-to-stu­dent re­la­tion­ship, more teach­ing time—whether COVID it­self had a greater im­pact on stu­dents’ per­for­mance in Math­e­mat­ics than oth­er sub­ject area—be­cause you can read and fol­low in oth­er sub­ject ar­eas, but in Math­e­mat­ics, you need to have a more prob­lem-solv­ing ap­proach,” he said.

“You have to do for­mu­las, un­der­stand for­mu­las, un­der­stand an­a­lyt­ics. That can be al­so an off­shoot of the prob­lem of COVID,” he said, adding that oth­er rea­sons for Guyana’s de­clin­ing Math per­for­mance might be the ef­fec­tive­ness of teach­ing de­liv­ery, chil­dren shy­ing away from the prob­lem-solv­ing mode of Math­e­mat­ics, and fear of the sub­ject.

Dr Ali said he has asked Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Priya Man­ickc­hand not to wait for next year’s CARI­COM dis­cus­sion on Math, but to en­gage in in­tro­spec­tion and as­cer­tain what glob­al­ly avail­able tools could be used to im­prove per­for­mance in the sub­ject.

“We’re in­vest­ing in the digi­ti­sa­tion of ed­u­ca­tion, the digi­ti­sa­tion of our text­books, the digi­ti­sa­tion of our teach­ing ma­te­r­i­al, the digi­ti­sa­tion of our learn­ing ma­te­r­i­al, digi­ti­sa­tion of our de­liv­ery,” he said.

The Yarrowkabra Sec­ondary School is cater­ing for an es­ti­mat­ed 1,019 stu­dents from sev­er­al vil­lages along the Soes­dyke/Lin­den High­way. The GUY$790 mil­lion (1 Guyana dol­lar=US$0.004 cents) learn­ing fa­cil­i­ty fea­tures 11 de­part­ments in­clud­ing En­tre­pre­neur­ial Stud­ies, STEAM (Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy, En­gi­neer­ing, Arts and Math­e­mat­ics) and TVET skills, with a ded­i­cat­ed co­hort of 65 teach­ers.

Pres­i­dent Ali said the in­fra­struc­ture is on­ly one com­po­nent of the gov­ern­ment’s bid to en­sure every child has ac­cess to world class ed­u­ca­tion.

“We can have the best fa­cil­i­ties, but if we al­so do not in­vest in hu­man re­sources that will help this fa­cil­i­ty to man­i­fest the type of re­sults that you’re in­vest­ing for, then you will have a mis­match,” he said.

He re­it­er­at­ed the gov­ern­ment’s goal of achiev­ing uni­ver­sal sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion, adding that this in­volves a fo­cus on digi­tis­ing ed­u­ca­tion to ad­dress chal­lenges in sub­jects like Math­e­mat­ics.

“We fur­ther be­lieve that uni­ver­sal ac­cess to sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion should not be con­sid­ered op­tion­al. It is an in­dis­pens­able right for ex­er­cise,” he as­sert­ed. “Sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion is not mere­ly a priv­i­lege—it is a fun­da­men­tal en­ti­tle­ment that must be ex­tend­ed to all.” —GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana (CMC)