‘No more superpowers controlling how much chalk a school gets’ – President promises

President Dr. Irfaan Ali believes that bureaucratic processes affect the timely provision of much-needed resources to children and schools so his government is now giving more autonomy to teachers and the management bodies of learning institutions.

The President, while addressing the opening of the new Victoria Lily Primary School at Tuschen, East Bank Essequibo, said giving schools more autonomy is a new policy of the Education Ministry.

For him, this new policy is necessary to cut unhelpful bureaucracy.

“There is a system that is very centralised with too much bureaucracy and too (many) power brokers.

“For example, the schools must go through the regional system to get basic, essential things to manage the schools and then you have bureaucratic delays.

“You have, sometimes, the creation of little superpowers who believe that the authority that is given to them is to control how much chalk goes to a school,” the President lamented.

Because the existing system has not functioned adequately, a decision has been taken to give resources directly to teachers and the schools’ administrations.

This decision was first announced by Education Minister Priya Manickchand at a recent sitting of the National Assembly when the government side of the House sought $61 billion in supplementary funding to advance projects. Then, Manickchand defended the move, stating that teachers know best what their learners need.

The Head of State agreed with this rationale.

“We are going to directly disburse (resources) to schools and then hold you accountable… so that we also develop greater management capacity, capability and leadership at the local level and we have greater involvement of communities,” President Ali said this week.

With the government now directly disbursing resources, Dr. Ali called on the Parent Teacher Associations (PTA) to be more vigilant and help monitor the use of state funds.

Meanwhile, Dr. Ali said this management system will also be used in the healthcare sector.

“We’re spending too much money in this region for the type of results we are getting in healthcare.

“People will have to buckle up and buckle up fast because we are not going to tolerate any type of delivery in the healthcare system that does not bring the results that we are investing in,” an evidently agitated President Ali said.