The government recently announced during the Minister of Finance's Budget presentation that it will be offering $10,000 to families to send their kids to school. This works out to a few billion dollars anually.
The idea is a good one in principle, but it will end up costing taxpayers more money because the ministry will have to ensure there is a monitoring, accountability and transparency system. The monies could have better been allocated to pay teachers higher salaries. The actual cost of doing that to say raise each teacher salary by $30,000 a month would have still been way cheaper than this approach and it will require a simple and straightforward way to implement, i.e. just increase payroll. Simple!
Moreover, the primary focus should be on the quality of education our kids receive than trying to increase the quantity getting to school through a process that offers no guarantee.
At the moment, teacher quality is pretty low because no one wants to become a teacher or those who are leave and migrate to better pastures. The equation is simple: Better teacher means better students means higher education success.
I'm not sure Guyana's current or most immediate education challenge is getting kids to school. Over the years, gov't has invested immensely in building physical schools, which has made them more accessible than ever. I don't see this policy resulting in a better quality of education in Guyana, although it might succeed in increasing the number of kids going to school with poor and demotivated teachers..but that increase is premised on the assumption that the parents do in-fact spend the money on school items…..
