TT Express News 2010 - Squandermania

Mary King has always been a favourite read of minem she does address educational issues, especially entrepreneurship and innovation, two aspects of education that are seldom dealt with by traditional educators (Sam Lochan being one exception).
Squandermania - Mary King
Monday, January 4th 2010

Part I
During the property tax debate the Opposition charged that the Government squandered almost TT$300 billion over the last eight years or so. In reply the Minister of Finance and other PNM MPs waved a newspaper article which purported to demonstrate that this was not the case. One MP even suggested that this article should be required reading for the Opposition and possibly all of us.

The article argued that if we agreed that the buildings constructed by the PNM would appreciate in value then the PNM government did not squander the money! Further, that in the Ryan poll 76 per cent of the respondents agreed that there was squander-mania and extravagance yet 65 per cent approved of the National Academy for the Performance Arts.

The article concludes that this evidence does not support squandermania and challenged readers to say how they would have allocated the funds.

As an Independent Senator I repeatedly cajoled both Governments to spend, especially in booms, in order to reconstruct our socio-economy. However, both the PNM’s and UNC’s spending, respectively, is and was not socially and economic efficient - i.e. the spending was in support of an unsustainable system.

Some of us still think that our private sector in this plantation economy that exploits a depleting resource, can, if facilitated or bribed by the government, diversify this economy. This view ignores the work of the New World Group, that of Lloyd Best, Kari Levitt, Beckford etc., which is also echoed by Sir Arthur Lewis.

Diversification requires the direct intervention by the Government in, as this column has discussed in detail, the creation of a National Innovation System, wherein the government takes a hands-on role to help create a new knowledge-based innovative and entrepreneurial class which would eventually pervade the country’s private sector.


The current private sector does very well in the boom times of our economy and, like our present government, sees the energy sector as everlasting, either that or business in T&T has a short time horizon.

In 2008 the Government spent TT$28.3 billion on subsidies and transfers, of which the petroleum subsidy was TT$2.1 billion. With PM Manning as the ’de facto’ Commonwealth champion of climate-change management and in a world not only attempting to constrain fossil fuel use but also considering imposing a carbon tax on users of petroleum products, our Government is subsidising the use of fossil energy.

Our manufacturers, who have found it impossible to break into the global market, have cheap, subsidised energy as their competitive advantage. When the RIC recommended rate increases for T&TEC our Government stalled these increases for years and then allowed only certain sectors to have increases, all the while subsidising T&TEC. The subsidisation of energy, the use of cheap natural resources to foster industrialisation, including the proposed aluminium smelter, is economically inefficient - squander-mania.


The Government spent as recurrent expenditure TT$1.66 billion on pensions and gratuities. Any enlightened business entity would recognise that pensions for its employees should be based on employee/employer contributions to an investment fund whose returns on investment pay pensions -- a yearly call on otherwise generated income should not be the source of pension payments.

Further, this fund guaranteed by Government can serve as investments into the diversification of the on-shore into a knowledge-based economy. This pension transfer is economically inefficient.

In 2008 the Government contributed some TT$1 billion to the education institutions. Following the UNC’s call that no child should be left behind, the present GATE programme funds anyone who is at least marginally qualified to attend an approved tertiary institution of her choice.

Our education system is about certification and is judged by the quantity of its output -- the aim is 60 per cent of the cohort. The quality of its graduates with respect to their demonstrated ability to move this nation towards a knowledge-based society is hopelessly inadequate.

The hope that UTT could project us into such a society has not materialised, though to date enormous sums of money have been spent on it. The tremendously expensive Tamana Technology Park is useless as a vector of this transformation since, like the energy sector but without the attraction of cheap gas, the plan is for foreign investment to diversify our on-shore economy. This transfer of funds to education is economic and socially inefficient.

Happy New Year to all (continued) maryking@tstt.net.tt

TT Express Education News - CSEC January Exams & Vacation days

So this year I hope to begin following particular news-stories published in the Express (I would like to do the other newspapers but is only me and a dissertation doesn't write itself...ah if only...volunteers welcome).
The first one for the year seems to be the 2 extra days given to students for the CSEC exams.

The story begins with Camille Bechtel's piece on Dec 29th, 2009, 2 more vacation days
Tuesday, December 29th 2009
cbethel@trinidadexpress.com

All secondary school pupils will have two days added to their Christmas vacation.
The Ministry of Education announced yesterday that secondary schools would now reopen on January 6. Primary schools, however, will reopen on January 4, as scheduled.
Teaching and non-teaching staff have been asked to report for work on January 4 and 5 to ensure the smooth resumption of classes.
’The Ministry of education advises parents, teachers and students of all public secondary schools that classes will resume on Wednesday 6 January 2010. This new date for reopening of schools has become necessary in order to utilise the schools as examination centres for the numerous candidates registered to write the January 2010 Caribbean Secondary Examination Certificate (CSEC), particularly in the areas of English A and Mathematics,’ a release from the ministry stated.
For an entire week in September, hundreds crowded the Ministry’s offices across the country, to submit their CSEC forms for the examination in January.

This was followed by a critique by B. Joseph on Sunday January 3rd Better planning needed from CXC, Education Ministry

Sunday, January 3rd 2010


How do you make sense of the Education Ministry’s decision to postpone the January 2010 restart of school for two days to facilitate external CSEC exams? Don’t the people at the Education Ministry talk to the people who plan exam schedules at CXC? Are all Caribbean territories also postponing the January 2010 reopening of schools for said reason, or is this just a T&T Education Ministry decision?

Is CXC hard-pressed to alter their traditional January exam schedule?

Conducting CSEC and CAPE exams during schools’ vacation time is not unprecedented. And schools were pretty much vacant for the last three weeks, with children on the traditional Christmas school break.

The CXC January exam planners should have taken full advantage of this downtime to do their CSEC math and English Language exams. After all, schools all across the Caribbean also close for three weeks for Christmas, unless I am mistaken. Had CXC scheduled these exams for dates during the vacation, they would have had full access to schools with few exceptions, eliminating the possibility of displacing normal school schedules. This assumes that CXC’s timetabling schedule is the source of the problem.

On the other hand, didn’t government spend billions on buildings during the last eight years and shell out billions to Caribbean neighbours for infrastructure and education? Where’s the infrastructure to circumvent this problem, which may very well become an annual event? Where are the people with better ideas than the ministry’s solution? Government spent some $300 billion in the last eight years, so where’s the education infrastructure to deal with this scenario? Why is children’s in-school contact time viewed as satisfactory sacrificial fat to alleviate the Education Ministry’s exam candidate spacing problem?

Curiously, many of those so-called dedicated teachers are silently glowing with joy for the extra downtime. That’s a sad attitude for people charged with delivering quality education. If only you took pride in your work, the Education Ministry would have had to back down on this one but as anticipated, not a peep from the nation’s educators, and they say what they do is important. And what of parents and the PTA? Not a peep from these ’stakeholders’ either.

Now don’t go demanding new buildings in hope of solving this problem in time for next year’s exams. Learn to maximize the use of what’s in front of you. Think vacation downtime, Education Ministry and CXC timetable planners. Schedule your exams to coincide with the vacation; don’t impose upon the children and don’t impose upon taxpayers’ pockets either.

B Joseph

And here's my response to B. Jospeh and this first education story for 2010.

CXC's BusinessThis is a response to B. Joseph's Letter in the Trinidad Express (Jan 3rd 2010).
One way to make sense of the TT Ministry of Education's decision to delay the January 2010 restart of school for two days to facilitate external CSEC exams is to acknowledge that CXC is first and foremost a business organization. They are not (primarily) an educational entity though the "products" and services that they market are branded as educational. Their products/services are assessment and certification through syllabus preparation, renewals and examinations. CXC's ‘business’ is neither teaching nor learning but the assessment and certification of educational accomplishment, or knowledge acquisition, or lack thereof. That being said while they do collaborate regularly with consumers of their products, viz. teachers, policy makers, educational professionals, etc. they essentially operate independently of them and thus they, like other testing organizations, are free to schedule examinations at a time and cost convenient to their business cycle. I would wager that from CXC's perspective they do not see their timetabling as a source of any problem. Rather the problem emanates from the over-subscription for the January examination brought about in no small part by our own Ministry's decision to pay the fees for all students who wished the write these exams at this time, without prejudice, and our TT culture of freeness which repeatedly manifests itself in a lack of restraint or mindfulness. CXC will likely be quite pleased with the revenue generated from servicing such a large candidate population in what has typically been a low subscription exam to facilitate the small number of repeaters, students seeking admissions to some foreign universities and those seeking to prepare for June exams by choosing to face the anxieties of a real but of limited consequence exam scenario.
Fueling the fervour, perhaps, (at least in the case of mathematics), is the major revision of CSEC examinations in June 2010 when the Basic proficiency certification will be eliminated in all subjects. This will add an additional four to five thousand students annually to the pool of students taking the General proficiency examinations. In mathematics, the structure of the Paper 2 will change ever so slightly but in a way that will have significant consequences. In the optional section students’ choices will be reduced to picking two questions from four where they now have a choice from six. This will make the paper more difficult for many students who will have to learn more mathematics than they have had to in the past in order to get a good grade. This does not mean though that students will learn any more useful mathematics than they do at present. In this light many students, perhaps, are, understandably, but unecessarily, taking advantage of a free opportunity to write the last examination of the current syllabus.
Mr. Joseph asks, "Why is children’s in-school contact time viewed as satisfactory sacrificial fat to alleviate the Education Ministry’s exam candidate spacing problem?" In response I offer that this is yet another exemplification of our distorted commitments, values, and priorities in education in Trinidad &Tobago where teaching (and teachers), learning, creative and critical thinking etc. are summarily sacrificed to business ideologies which are embodied in the pursuit of examinations and certification as ends in and of themselves rather than as means to more nobler ends.
Finally, as a former secondary teacher, I agree with Mr. Joseph that taking joy in not having to turn up for a job that does not value you or what you do as much as what you produce towards the educational bottom-line, viz. passes or scholarships, is a sad attitude. Indeed many of our most dedicated and professional teachers are sad, frustrated, hurt, depressed and angry. Unfortunately they are not militant, a consequence of years of conditioning for domestic docility, and rightly fear to take a stand or speak up given the example made of those who have and the rewards that have gone to those who continue to keep silent and do their duty. It is a sad but understandable attitude given the reality, culture and consequences of being a teacher in TT at this time. Mr. Joseph reasons wrongly however in that it does not matter how much pride teachers take in their work, the Education Ministry could not have backed down even if they wanted to. These exams will happen at this time according to CXC's timetable and no one else's because CXC has no other regional competition in the exam/certification business. Perhaps that too needs to change?
If we do value teaching, teachers, and schooling as much as we say we do we should take care that this debacle does not become a staple in the school calendar, yet another annual local spectacle and waste of taxpayers' monies.

Steven Khan