Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is blam­ing the cur­rent ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem for cre­at­ing a con­vey­er belt of un­e­d­u­cat­ed young gang mem­bers. And he be­lieves it is time to start a con­ver­sa­tion about it.

Speak­ing with mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty at Break­fast with the Prime Min­is­ter at the Hilton Trinidad in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Row­ley lament­ed that sig­nif­i­cant amounts of young peo­ple pass through the sec­ondary school sys­tem with­out learn­ing any­thing. He blamed the au­to­mat­ic pro­mo­tion of all chil­dren in­to sec­ondary school as a main con­trib­u­tor to the prob­lem.

“Be­cause once we’ve made the de­ci­sion that every­body goes to high school, the ques­tions re­main, what about those chil­dren who en­ter the sec­ondary school sys­tem hav­ing not been read­ied in the pri­ma­ry sys­tem? When they get in­to the sec­ondary school sys­tem, what is the cur­ricu­lum that they are go­ing to fol­low? Is it the cur­ricu­lum of the pri­ma­ry school as a con­tin­u­a­tion? Or the cur­ricu­lum of a sec­ondary school that they can’t cope with?”

The Prime Min­is­ter said if these ques­tions are not an­swered, this coun­try will con­tin­ue to face the is­sue of young men com­ing out of the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem to­tal­ly un­pre­pared for a re­spon­si­ble life.

“Those are the ones who large­ly end up in the clutch­es of the drug deal­ers and the smart men who or­gan­ise gangs. And what is the skill they can car­ry? Crim­i­nal con­duct.”

Dr Row­ley asked the au­di­ence to re­mem­ber a time when sec­ondary school ed­u­ca­tion was lim­it­ed to a priv­i­leged few.

“There was no waste, every­body who get is­land schol­ar­ship in those days came out as con­tribut­ing cit­i­zens. To­day, every­body go­ing to the sys­tem, the sys­tem is not ready for every­body.”

He said this is in turn frus­trat­ing the coun­try’s ed­u­ca­tors.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so scold­ed par­ents to take con­trol of their chil­dren.

“And of course, we have a large chunk of par­ents who are not ready for par­ent­ing, even in tak­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the child they send to the school. And too many of them be­lieve the Gov­ern­ment is re­spon­si­ble for that. The first re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for chil­dren is in the home, that is the first re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, and this coun­try needs to go back to that,” Dr Row­ley said to tu­mul­tuous ap­plause.

In Ju­ly 2000, the then Bas­deo Pan­day-led Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress gov­ern­ment an­nounced its in­ten­tion to im­ple­ment uni­ver­sal sec­ondary school ed­u­ca­tion by Sep­tem­ber of that year. At the time, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar held the post of Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion. The gov­ern­ment’s ra­tio­nale was to ac­com­mo­date the near­ly 10,000 stu­dents who fail the Com­mon En­trance Ex­am­i­na­tions an­nu­al­ly.