Sat­narayan Ma­haraj

Part 2

It is in­ter­est­ing but in­struc­tive when one lis­tens to the en­e­mies of de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools who are filled with rage and en­vy.They do not ac­knowl­edge their own lack of knowl­edge in their year­ly ex­am at­tacks on these de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools.It is clear to any rea­son­able-mind­ed per­son that those at­tacks are noth­ing but smoke screens for their own fail­ure to achieve the stan­dards set by de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools.

Some peo­ple even seek to di­min­ish the achieve­ments of de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools by re­fer­ring to them as "so-called pres­tige schools." This stri­den­cy against de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools sur­faces twice a year. The first is when peo­ple seek en­try for their chil­dren at the start of the aca­d­e­m­ic year at pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary lev­els, and are un­suc­cess­ful.

Achieve­ment cre­ates ex­ces­sive de­mand for spaces at de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools at all lev­els of the school sys­tem–in­clud­ing EC­CE ed­u­ca­tion–and every child can­not be ac­com­mo­dat­ed. At the end of each term at gov­ern­ment schools, there are thou­sands of par­ents who seek trans­fers to de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools on be­half of their chil­dren

The sec­ond is when NCSE, CSEC and CAPE re­sults are re­leased and the suc­cess dis­par­i­ty be­tween gov­ern­ment and de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools is pub­lished. Then, there is a cry by peo­ple who de­mand an "even play­ing field" in­stead of search­ing for so­lu­tions to im­prove stu­dent per­for­mance at gov­ern­ment schools.

A clam­our is sound­ed that tax­pay­ers' mon­ey must be with­drawn from sup­port­ing de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools as if those schools have alien stu­dents and their par­ents or guardians are not tax­pay­ers. But this is the type of il­lit­er­a­cy prop­a­gat­ed by those who con­tin­ue to pre­side over some of our failed schools.

De­nom­i­na­tion­al schools are vast­ly un­der­fund­ed when com­pared to gov­ern­ment schools, both at the pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary lev­els. Un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act any­one is free to ver­i­fy this.

For ex­am­ple, a de­nom­i­na­tion­al sec­ondary school with a stu­dent pop­u­la­tion of 525 re­ceives al­most 40 per cent less fund­ing than a gov­ern­ment sec­ondary school. The fund­ing for such a school com­pris­es mon­ey for the prin­ci­pal to de­liv­er the cur­ricu­lum as well as mon­ey for all clean­ers, handy­men, etc. An in­ad­e­quate grant is al­so giv­en for year­ly se­cu­ri­ty at the schools.

The ac­tu­al funds avail­able for use by the prin­ci­pal is hun­dreds of thou­sands less than a coun­ter­part at a gov­ern­ment school re­ceives. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the coun­ter­part at the gov­ern­ment school has a sig­nif­i­cant­ly larg­er cadre of se­cu­ri­ty and main­te­nance staff as well as health and safe­ty of­fi­cers. The last two are not avail­able to de­nom­i­na­tion­al school.

Yet the en­vi­ron­ment of a de­nom­i­na­tion­al school is al­ways neater and clean­er than most gov­ern­ment schools. Ac­count­abil­i­ty is a key is­sue. While the ac­count­abil­i­ty to the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion and the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion for per­for­mance is large­ly ne­glect­ed in gov­ern­ment schools, de­nom­i­na­tion­al boards of ed­u­ca­tion ex­act strict su­per­vi­sion over their prin­ci­pals and teach­ers.

Some lev­el of un­der­per­for­mance ex­ists in some de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools at the pri­ma­ry lev­el.

But this is not al­lowed to fes­ter with­out in­ter­ven­tion. It is al­so amus­ing to note that while de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools suf­fer re­lent­less at­tacks for their high lev­els of per­for­mance and while in­di­vid­u­als wish to re­move the 20 per cent in­take guar­an­teed to each board, no crit­ic is de­mand­ing the same for the high per­form­ing gov­ern­ment schools such as Cou­va East, QRC, St George's Col­lege, Tu­na­puna Sec­ondary, San Fer­nan­do Cen­tral and Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral.

In the SEA place­ment, the 20 per cent in­take by Boards is pred­i­cat­ed on in­puts by Boards which are not in the do­main of the sec­ondary schools. The 20 per cent is pre­sent­ed as a free ride when in fact it is an in­valu­able cost in­put in main­tain­ing stan­dards at schools.

De­nom­i­na­tion­al boards are re­quired to source tremen­dous sums of mon­ey to fund school ac­tiv­i­ties be­cause of an in­ad­e­quate Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion al­lo­ca­tion. Gov­ern­ment schools, with all kinds of staff, have the where­with­al to per­form works be­yond the scope of de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools. With­out par­ent con­tri­bu­tions, the stan­dards at de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools will di­min­ish over a short pe­ri­od of time.

It is on­ly through the recog­ni­tion and fore­sight of the present Min­ster of Ed­u­ca­tion, Dr Tim Gopeesingh that a fund­ing mech­a­nism of $152 a stu­dent per year was im­ple­ment­ed. It is on­ly in re­cent years has the gov­ern­ment fund­ed to­tal­ly in some re­spects the con­struc­tion, main­te­nance and re­pairs cost at all de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools. For decades pre­vi­ous­ly, a fund­ing for­mu­la of 25 per cent or 33 1/3 per cent of over­all costs resided with de­nom­i­na­tion­al boards.

It should be not­ed how­ev­er that no Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion ever had an ad­e­quate al­lo­ca­tion to ser­vice the needs of every school in every re­spect, there­fore, de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools are con­stant­ly be­ing cre­ative in rais­ing funds to dis­charge sev­er­al du­ties and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

Crit­ics must take par­tic­u­lar note that the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha it­self and its prin­ci­pals, staff, par­ents and bene­fac­tors have nev­er ac­cept­ed the role of men­di­cants in so­ci­ety. Through sev­er­al ef­forts and great costs, the SDMS has pro­cured lands, ren­o­vat­ed schools, con­struct­ed new blocks and or­gan­ised cost­ly ac­tiv­i­ties to ser­vice the needs of the na­tion. The re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of de­nom­i­na­tion­al boards are du­ti­ful­ly dis­charged and de­serve an eter­nal debt of grat­i­tude by the na­tion.