Education, failed culture and inspiration
thenassauguardian editorial
Nassau, Bahamas
It was important that Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham took time to greet 12-year-old Anna Albury outside of the House of Assembly on Monday. The girl, who is blind, was recently crowned Primary School Student of the Year over 115 candidates from around the country.
“I am like just any other child. I do not look at myself as having a disability. I just happen to be blind,” said the sixth grader from Hope Town School on receiving the award.
Fully blind from birth, Anna could have been placed in the School for the Blind, but her parents Theresa and Lambert Albury insisted that she be raised normally with other children. They wanted her to do well.
With their encouragement and the support of her teachers and classmates, Anna has maintained an outstanding 3.8 cumulative grade point average.
Here in New Providence in our public school system many children with two working eyes, two working ears, two working legs and two working arms are not doing nearly as well as Anna. And they benefit from a free education through grade 12.
The national D average in the Bahamas General Certificate of Secondary Education (BGCSE) exams masks the tremendous lack of achievement in our public school system. If the private schools are taken out of that calculation, our public school system would be in the F average range. No nation can be great with that level of underachievement.
Many blame the government of the day and the education bureaucracy for not doing more to reform the public education system. Certainly, there is more that can be done on the policy and funding sides of the equation to reform our system. However, a major part of the education problem in this country is our culture. Governments and civil servants cannot make Bahamian parents and guardians care about education.
Too many parents do not demand enough from their children. Too many Bahamians simply do not value the free education that is offered.
Concerned parents, relatives and guardians are crucial catalysts to success when it comes to educational achievement. When families care about education and hold children to standards, those children do better. When families only care about proms and making sure children are dressed in the trendiest clothes at the beginning of the school year, those children do not do as well.
Our culture has assumed too much of the foolish commercial nonsense from the two cultural centers we are between – the United States and Jamaica. Knowledge of the latest rap or dancehall song is high, while the literacy and numeracy levels are low in The Bahamas.
We must do better.
Education is not merely about being prepared for the job market. It is about being a reasoned human being able to understand and function independently in the community you live in. It is also about being able to participate in the development and governance of that society in many different ways.
Too many Bahamians are too comfortable being uneducated. Too many Bahamians are too comfortable raising uneducated children. This must change.
What is especially problematic about this situation is that the free education system through grade 12 was something that was fought for.
The first black government of The Bahamas in 1967 had as its mandate ensuring that all Bahamians had access to education. In the ensuing decades schools were built across the country. Now, 44 years later, many of the parents and children who are the heirs to that movement show little interest in knowledge, learning and achievement.
Ignorant people are always ruled by smarter people. A people cannot be independent if they are dumb.
Bahamians must stop making excuses when it comes to learning and achievement. Yes, education reform is needed. But what is equally needed is concern about learning and knowledge by our people. A father who is not smart should, and can, have as a goal ensuring that his children do better than he did.
He can ensure that his children behave in school and do the work assigned; he can participate in the school’s Parent Teacher Association; he can seek tutoring for his children to ensure they have the technical assistance he cannot provide.
Anna Albury, a blind girl from a small school in the Family Islands, is doing well. She is inspirational. Born with a disadvantage, she still excels.
Mothers, fathers, relatives and guardians across The Bahamas must do more to ensure that their well-bodied children do better and take advantage of the opportunities given to them. We must care more about education and learning to ensure that we, Bahamians, have the capacity to govern ourselves and to command every sector of our economy.
Jun 08, 2011
thenassauguardian editorial
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Showing posts with label education Bahamas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label education Bahamas. Show all posts
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Monday, May 30, 2011
Bahamas: The time has long passed for the nation to demand value for its money in public Education
Education: Are your children getting value for money?
By NOELLE NICOLLS
Tribune Staff Reporter
nnicolls@tribunemedia.net
Nassau, The Bahamas
Last week during a public address Education Minister Desmond Bannister said it is time for the nation to "demand value for (its) money."
The Minister was wrong about only one thing: The time has long passed. The government consistently invests some $200 million in the Ministry of Education annually. So the Minister was definitely correct in saying the nation has great expectations for its education leaders.
Most of the Ministry's budget is allocated to the Department of Education, with as much as 70 per cent going towards salaries. That leaves the department with under $30 million to distribute amongst the various school boards; to purchase school supplies and equipment for the 4000 teachers across 160 schools and everything in between. That $30 million is bolstered by millions of dollars in funding from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). Since the mid-1990s, the Ministry of Education (MOE) has spent well over $70 million in IDB money.
Despite the cumulative billions spent on education, the public school system still leaves a lot to be desired, especially when it comes to technology. Less than 10 out of 160 schools in the system have publicly funded computer labs, and only a handful more has self-funded labs. Computer literacy amongst the nation's teachers is still woefully low, which has hampered the transition from "chalk and talk" classrooms to multimedia centres of learning. To this day, there is still no information technology (IT) curriculum for the Bahamas General Certificate of Secondary Education (BGCSE). The closest the public school system gets to preparing our students for the technology needs of the twenty-first century is a BGCSE in keyboarding.
I am taking the minister up on his public invitation; I only hope the guardians of the nation's education system are really prepared for the scrutiny. The truth is often inconvenient. So far there has been a pleasantly surprising level of openness at the directorate level within the department of education (DOE).
There are some harsh realities facing the education apparatus. People inside the inner circles know all too well, the MOE has many dirty little secrets. Over the years, institutional and political roadblocks have stonewalled many who tried to bring them to light.
Earlier this year, ten people were transferred from their posts in the MOE amidst investigations of corruption and theft. One of the employees, it was alleged, was found with a "laundry list" of items that had been taken from a storage unit. Police investigations into this matter stalled, because the suspects were allegedly "vouched for" by senior ministry officials. It was claimed that one of the persons involved was even transferred to a section of the ministry overseeing the current $11.8 million IDB project.
Unfortunately, this highly suspect move is not surprising to some. Informed sources claim that a culture exists at the MOE where certain people are able to escape disciplinary action because they have something to hold over the head of another. There is a fear that any given person can and will "talk ya business, and name names." The culture has created an environment where many escape judgment. Culpable employees have even become untouchable to the minister.
Despite this perceived reality, there are those who would try to project an image of no reproach. No doubt this posturing is intended to protect the reputation of the MOE and those that lead it. But in the end, this strategy seems counterproductive.
It is an unfortunate predicament, particularly for those who are genuine about creating a system deserving of our public school students. No doubt, the genuine majority outweighs the questionable few, but given the education budget, the cost of mismanagement amounts to millions of dollars in waste. One 10 per cent kickback could amount to the cost of a badly needed new computer lab for a public school.
The MOE has been on the radar of the Ministry of Finance for several years. A few years ago, Finance changed the way money is disbursed for certain procurements, such as computers, and increased its oversight of education funds provided through the IDB loan facility. There was a concern about "kickbacks" in the system, so the ministry had its financial controls tightened.
Government regulators get a bad rap for allowing this institutional impropriety, but as one high level source at the Ministry of Finance told me, when you investigate a situation, there is often enough evidence "for me to believe", but that does not mean there is sufficient "evidential fact to dismiss or prosecute".
Officials are faced with a complex system that makes it near impossible to clean up shop. They often rely on shuffling or retirements to avoid lengthy and costly investigations that can get messy for all parties involved, and destroy public confidence in the process. Even still, the MOE has a number of employees under investigation. They all remain on the government payroll, and some of them are chilling at home laughing their way to the bank.
Discussing these shortfalls is not to dismiss or overlook the positive things happening in education. Last week, the permanent secretary, Elma Garraway, proudly reminded me about how well the system is working for children of all "abilities and disabilities", pointing to the recent success of a blind student from Abaco, who secured the prestigious Bahamas Primary School Student of the Year award this year.
There are many positive education stories that deserve to be shared, and many of them are. Like the story of the model computer lab at L W Young that was independently funded by private donors based on the aggressive fund raising efforts of its former principal. But when we ask the inconvenient questions, thin-skinned educators should remember, it is not personal. The reality is when things work well in education the proof of the pudding is in the results. When things go awry the proof is in the public purse.
When the government announced its new budget last week, the MOE got "everything it asked for", as one source said, all $200 million of it. How many departments and ministries can boast of the same? The public education system is one of the nation's most important institutions, so I believe like the minister said, the country has a right to ask and a right to know if we are getting value for our money.
Given all that has been said, let us apply scrutiny to the MOE, starting in the area of information technology. The MOE has an inspiring vision of how information technology can modernize the education system and provide innovative ways to bring about a unified and automated system of data management.
Over the past two years, the MOE successfully piloted the introduction of Pearson's PowerSchool, a web-based student information software (SIS), in several public schools, including Anatol Rogers, CR Walker High School, St George's High School and Mary P Russell Junior High. The software manages student grades, attendance records, and any number of other data variables. It provides real-time access to student records for teachers, students, parents and administrators.
The implementation of an SIS system by the department of education is a key pillar of modernization. Such systems have the power to centralize all of the records in the public school network, providing administrators and policy makers access to reliable data based on any number of variables.
In practical terms, this means schools could finally have an automated process of generating report cards; teachers could stay in the comfort of their homes on a Saturday afternoon while entering assignment grades. Parents could log into the system from work and access the school records of their children. Truancy officers could log into the system from a handheld device and pull up a student record to match against any explanation a child in the field may provide. The possibilities are unlimited for a robust SIS.
Private schools in the country have long since joined the international pack. The Catholic Board of Education and a few other private schools, like the Lyford Cay School, are using the same software being piloted by the ministry. Other private schools like Queen's College, St. Andrew's School and St Augustine's College have been using a similar SIS product offered by Rediker Software Inc.
The ultimate objective of the DOE is to have every school networked through a web-based information-management system. Informed sources say, in three to five years, this could be a reality for less than $1 million per year. But the ministry is not ready to green light the full-scale implementation, for several good reasons. Chief among them: Over the six to eight years the MOE spent some $6 million on an older "dead-beat" system that has failed to live up to expectations. The government is still spending upwards of $91,000 per year on that system.
This happens to be a part of the back story to the ministry's foray into the world of education software. The PowerSchool pilot project has been deemed a success by education officials, but it represents the middle part of a story that has an unfortunate beginning. Education officials were burned badly in the past and they are doing their best not to jump into the fire again.
Over six years ago, the MOE contracted Software Technology Inc (STI), a US company specialising in SIS, to be the chosen partner to modernize the school system. The STI system was rolled out in 20 public schools. It would be an understatement to say, the MOE has been "challenged" with the implementation of STI. So much so that let us say, the MOE is about ready to send STI on its merry way, scrapping the system entirely, informed sources say.
Ask any school administrator about the STI system, and you may get the same response I first got: "That's secret." Amongst the teachers you will get a mixed bag of reactions, including a lot of frustration and disappointment.
"To be honest, my opinion of STI is that it seems to me a bit of an antiquated system that we got, because other schools are using systems that are tried and tested. Why didn't we get one of those? Why did we get that system?" asked one high school teacher.
When STI was originally rolled out, it was not an online system. So even though CV Bethel was one of the original schools on the STI pilot, its system is not online to this day and its capabilities are below expectations. The original STI was a server based programme that could only be accessed on the internal network of an individual school, said a source. The company has upgraded since it was first contracted by the MOE, but its transition has not been seamless.
One primary school teacher said the problem of STI is the level of computer literacy amongst school administrators and teachers, and the level of access to computers at schools. He works at a primary school where STI is functioning. With more training he said the system could work, but there seems to be a lack of buy in from teachers, particularly the older ones, who "are not going to learn to use the computer just to use STI."
Director of Education Lionel Sands is not ashamed to admit, the STI system is not functioning in the way it ought to. Other high-ranking sources inside the ministry echoed his sentiment: "The contract that was negotiated with STI was not in the best interest of the department."
The cost of STI continues to grow each year without the concurrent increase in benefit. In fact, two of the original 20 STI schools were removed from the network and placed in the PowerSchool pilot. Just a few weeks ago, executives from STI were in the Bahamas having high level discussions with the MOE. They visit every year to be debriefed on the experience with the system locally.
"Of course this year was no different. We explained that we were not fully satisfied with where we were with respect to the number of schools that should have been involved in STI. We were not completely satisfied that it was operating the way we thought it should be operating. Even the schools that were on STI, they were still having problems over all of these years. We sought to explain that to them," said Mr Sands.
"Certainly we did not think that the license fee we were asked to pay was justifiable in light of the fact that we were not getting the full benefit of the system," he said.
Some details of the original STI contract remain sketchy. It was signed several years before Mr Sands assumed the directorship, so there are things he said he cannot fully explain, like what has been the exact cost outlay on STI. Sources claim $6 million and perhaps more was spent originally. Mr Sands was uncertain, but said the $6 million figure could be the cumulative cost over the years. One source, however, claimed there is missing documentation in the MOE concerning transactions related to the original STI license agreement.
According to sources close to the matter, the MOE lacked the internal expertise to effectively negotiate the original agreement. And to this day, one source said, the MOE does not have the internal technical expertise to manage the system.
If a school on the system experiences a server failure on report card day, for example, there is no system plan in place to solve that problem. This scenario played itself out in the past. The MOE has to give STI technicians an all-expense paid vacation in the Bahamas to handle any major technical problem that arise. The teachers who were originally trained to manage STI have since been redeployed to teach. Only one of the originally trained persons is still assigned to deal with STI.
When the STI system was implemented, there was "not a lot of forward thinking and planning", said the source. In some instances, for example, schools had to manually calculate the cumulative grade point averages for their finalizing students, because the STI system could not account for students' historical data. So STI report cards that were generated by the system had handwritten cumulative GPAs, according to a source. Details such as this were not taken into proper consideration in the first instance.
Further proof is the fact that to this day, all of the data on the STI system is stored off shore. In other words, the STI servers are located in the United States of America. And so a foreign country is housing government data on students in the 18 schools. Some have raised questions about the legality of that arrangement.
Mr Sands said he is not clear about how the data storage predicament came to be. As best as he can understand, he said at the time the system was launched, there was no local capacity to handle a server of that size. It was envisioned that the system would eventually migrate to the Bahamas.
The situation has somewhat changed today in that Cable Bahamas has the capacity and currently stores the data for public and private schools using the PowerSchool system. Mr Sands said localizing the MOE's database from the STI system is currently a high priority.
The bottom line in the STI saga seems to be a sense that STI should have delivered far more given the amount of time and money the government has invested in the system to date.
"We are supposed to be able now to say to a parent, if you want to see how your child is doing in school, just get online and you can see that without having to wait for report card day. That is what the system ought to be able to do. It is not doing that. Those are some of the challenges we are faced with," said Mr Sands.
"When I want to look at what a teacher is doing in a particular class I should be able to do that from my office computer, so I can see time on task; so I can see report cards being completed; so I can see how students are functioning; so I can see whether the curriculum is meeting the needs of the children. I don't have that with (the STI programme) even though it has the capacity to give me that," he said.
Fortunately, there is a silver lining for the 50,000 students in the public school system. The Director said he is still committed to getting it right and realizing the vision. And despite their frustrations, most of the stakeholders appear to be sold on the need to push forward.
"Working properly the system is very advantageous for us. I certainly would pursue something like that simply because I know the benefits of it. I have seen the benefits of it. We live in an age where we have to get away from doing all of these things manually. We can get it done with technology. There is a need no doubt about it," said Mr Sands.
So far the project has been moving at "snail's pace", said Mr Sands. There are 18 schools with STI out of 160 "over the past however long." With the speed of technological advancements, Mr Sands said he could only imagine what the MOE is missing out on. "We are still back in 2003/4 with technology of that time when we need 2011/12 technology," he said. That is another reason why the DOE wants to get it right this time around.
"That is why we want to make sure PowerSchool is giving us something that keeps us abreast and moves us. We want to make sure that as technology advances we are advancing with technology to get the best for our children. That is the bottom line. We want to see change in our instructional programmes. We want to see our student succeeding. We want to see administrators and teachers at their best using technology. We can't be in 1950 and expect that to happen in 2011," he said.
This time around the MOE has hired in the expertise. The DOE is currently using the technology consulting services of Deloitte and Touche to pilot PowerSchool. Mr Sands said he is comfortable saying, "The PowerSchool pilot has been a success", but that is not stopping the DOE from proceeding with due care.
"Our challenge is to be sure that if we were to go with PowerSchool for all of the other schools that we would get the kind of proposal from Deloitte that would be consistent with the service provided and not necessarily a money making venture for Deloitte, because you could have that whenever you have a monopoly. If you are the only person doing it you can charge me whatever you feel like simply because I need it and you are the only one doing it. And so we are very careful that we do not get into a situation where we are paying out more money than the service that we need," said Mr Sands.
"So what we are doing in addition to looking at Deloitte, we are looking at other companies that might be able to provide a similar service to see what their costing would be like, so we could compare proposals. Yes we are satisfied with Deloitte and PowerSchool, but we will not run headlong into Deloitte and PowerSchool, because we understand the nature of business. So we are cautious and will be cautious in doing that. We do not want to run the risk of doing a similar thing that STI did. Back then they saw something good that could come out of STI and they just ran with it. We want to be very careful," he said.
Deloitte and Touche was invited into the project through a recommendation by the Ministry of Finance, according to sources. The company is no stranger to government contracts. In fact, its managing partner Raymond Winder is one of the government's lead negotiators at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Sources claim, the Ministry of Finance took an interest because it was concerned about plugging the leak in STI expenditure.
The team at Deloitte operating the project, according to Tribune sources, is not off-shore, but rather "100 per cent Bahamian run", including their database administrators, security experts, project implementers and managers.
Donavan Morrison, IT Administrator at the Catholic Board of Education, said anyone running a project like PowerSchool should have expertise in areas like networking, system design, database systems, and web-based software.
"It requires a very in depth background when it comes to software development. You have to know for instance, what the server size needs to be are based on the bandwidth requirements. The person needs a huge background in networking and software implementation," he said.
There are a variety of "consulting shops" based in the Bahamas that have that type of expertise, according to sources, but not all of them are focused in the area needed by the MOE. IBM, for example, has the capacity; however, one source, with a stake in Deloitte, said, "They only sell hardware in the Bahamas."
Ernst & Young and PWC, have the capacity, but their local operation is built around auditing services, said the source. The same goes for KPMG, the consulting firm that handled the BTC sale. It focuses on "corporate finance", said the source.
The MOE has a major decision to make about pushing forward with its agenda. The best thing they can do to avoid creating any clouds of suspicion that could sour their chances at progress is to be more transparent than ever before. Government administrators should not be ashamed to speak about their past shortcomings or failures. It should be encouraged, so the public can have confidence in their ability to learn from the past.
So far, it appears that the muddy waters of the past seem to be settling. For now, in assessing the MOE's use of public funds to invest in student information software, I can say, we are not there yet, but it seems as though we are on our way to getting value for our money.
May 30, 2011
tribune242
By NOELLE NICOLLS
Tribune Staff Reporter
nnicolls@tribunemedia.net
Nassau, The Bahamas
Last week during a public address Education Minister Desmond Bannister said it is time for the nation to "demand value for (its) money."
The Minister was wrong about only one thing: The time has long passed. The government consistently invests some $200 million in the Ministry of Education annually. So the Minister was definitely correct in saying the nation has great expectations for its education leaders.
Most of the Ministry's budget is allocated to the Department of Education, with as much as 70 per cent going towards salaries. That leaves the department with under $30 million to distribute amongst the various school boards; to purchase school supplies and equipment for the 4000 teachers across 160 schools and everything in between. That $30 million is bolstered by millions of dollars in funding from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). Since the mid-1990s, the Ministry of Education (MOE) has spent well over $70 million in IDB money.
Despite the cumulative billions spent on education, the public school system still leaves a lot to be desired, especially when it comes to technology. Less than 10 out of 160 schools in the system have publicly funded computer labs, and only a handful more has self-funded labs. Computer literacy amongst the nation's teachers is still woefully low, which has hampered the transition from "chalk and talk" classrooms to multimedia centres of learning. To this day, there is still no information technology (IT) curriculum for the Bahamas General Certificate of Secondary Education (BGCSE). The closest the public school system gets to preparing our students for the technology needs of the twenty-first century is a BGCSE in keyboarding.
I am taking the minister up on his public invitation; I only hope the guardians of the nation's education system are really prepared for the scrutiny. The truth is often inconvenient. So far there has been a pleasantly surprising level of openness at the directorate level within the department of education (DOE).
There are some harsh realities facing the education apparatus. People inside the inner circles know all too well, the MOE has many dirty little secrets. Over the years, institutional and political roadblocks have stonewalled many who tried to bring them to light.
Earlier this year, ten people were transferred from their posts in the MOE amidst investigations of corruption and theft. One of the employees, it was alleged, was found with a "laundry list" of items that had been taken from a storage unit. Police investigations into this matter stalled, because the suspects were allegedly "vouched for" by senior ministry officials. It was claimed that one of the persons involved was even transferred to a section of the ministry overseeing the current $11.8 million IDB project.
Unfortunately, this highly suspect move is not surprising to some. Informed sources claim that a culture exists at the MOE where certain people are able to escape disciplinary action because they have something to hold over the head of another. There is a fear that any given person can and will "talk ya business, and name names." The culture has created an environment where many escape judgment. Culpable employees have even become untouchable to the minister.
Despite this perceived reality, there are those who would try to project an image of no reproach. No doubt this posturing is intended to protect the reputation of the MOE and those that lead it. But in the end, this strategy seems counterproductive.
It is an unfortunate predicament, particularly for those who are genuine about creating a system deserving of our public school students. No doubt, the genuine majority outweighs the questionable few, but given the education budget, the cost of mismanagement amounts to millions of dollars in waste. One 10 per cent kickback could amount to the cost of a badly needed new computer lab for a public school.
The MOE has been on the radar of the Ministry of Finance for several years. A few years ago, Finance changed the way money is disbursed for certain procurements, such as computers, and increased its oversight of education funds provided through the IDB loan facility. There was a concern about "kickbacks" in the system, so the ministry had its financial controls tightened.
Government regulators get a bad rap for allowing this institutional impropriety, but as one high level source at the Ministry of Finance told me, when you investigate a situation, there is often enough evidence "for me to believe", but that does not mean there is sufficient "evidential fact to dismiss or prosecute".
Officials are faced with a complex system that makes it near impossible to clean up shop. They often rely on shuffling or retirements to avoid lengthy and costly investigations that can get messy for all parties involved, and destroy public confidence in the process. Even still, the MOE has a number of employees under investigation. They all remain on the government payroll, and some of them are chilling at home laughing their way to the bank.
Discussing these shortfalls is not to dismiss or overlook the positive things happening in education. Last week, the permanent secretary, Elma Garraway, proudly reminded me about how well the system is working for children of all "abilities and disabilities", pointing to the recent success of a blind student from Abaco, who secured the prestigious Bahamas Primary School Student of the Year award this year.
There are many positive education stories that deserve to be shared, and many of them are. Like the story of the model computer lab at L W Young that was independently funded by private donors based on the aggressive fund raising efforts of its former principal. But when we ask the inconvenient questions, thin-skinned educators should remember, it is not personal. The reality is when things work well in education the proof of the pudding is in the results. When things go awry the proof is in the public purse.
When the government announced its new budget last week, the MOE got "everything it asked for", as one source said, all $200 million of it. How many departments and ministries can boast of the same? The public education system is one of the nation's most important institutions, so I believe like the minister said, the country has a right to ask and a right to know if we are getting value for our money.
Given all that has been said, let us apply scrutiny to the MOE, starting in the area of information technology. The MOE has an inspiring vision of how information technology can modernize the education system and provide innovative ways to bring about a unified and automated system of data management.
Over the past two years, the MOE successfully piloted the introduction of Pearson's PowerSchool, a web-based student information software (SIS), in several public schools, including Anatol Rogers, CR Walker High School, St George's High School and Mary P Russell Junior High. The software manages student grades, attendance records, and any number of other data variables. It provides real-time access to student records for teachers, students, parents and administrators.
The implementation of an SIS system by the department of education is a key pillar of modernization. Such systems have the power to centralize all of the records in the public school network, providing administrators and policy makers access to reliable data based on any number of variables.
In practical terms, this means schools could finally have an automated process of generating report cards; teachers could stay in the comfort of their homes on a Saturday afternoon while entering assignment grades. Parents could log into the system from work and access the school records of their children. Truancy officers could log into the system from a handheld device and pull up a student record to match against any explanation a child in the field may provide. The possibilities are unlimited for a robust SIS.
Private schools in the country have long since joined the international pack. The Catholic Board of Education and a few other private schools, like the Lyford Cay School, are using the same software being piloted by the ministry. Other private schools like Queen's College, St. Andrew's School and St Augustine's College have been using a similar SIS product offered by Rediker Software Inc.
The ultimate objective of the DOE is to have every school networked through a web-based information-management system. Informed sources say, in three to five years, this could be a reality for less than $1 million per year. But the ministry is not ready to green light the full-scale implementation, for several good reasons. Chief among them: Over the six to eight years the MOE spent some $6 million on an older "dead-beat" system that has failed to live up to expectations. The government is still spending upwards of $91,000 per year on that system.
This happens to be a part of the back story to the ministry's foray into the world of education software. The PowerSchool pilot project has been deemed a success by education officials, but it represents the middle part of a story that has an unfortunate beginning. Education officials were burned badly in the past and they are doing their best not to jump into the fire again.
Over six years ago, the MOE contracted Software Technology Inc (STI), a US company specialising in SIS, to be the chosen partner to modernize the school system. The STI system was rolled out in 20 public schools. It would be an understatement to say, the MOE has been "challenged" with the implementation of STI. So much so that let us say, the MOE is about ready to send STI on its merry way, scrapping the system entirely, informed sources say.
Ask any school administrator about the STI system, and you may get the same response I first got: "That's secret." Amongst the teachers you will get a mixed bag of reactions, including a lot of frustration and disappointment.
"To be honest, my opinion of STI is that it seems to me a bit of an antiquated system that we got, because other schools are using systems that are tried and tested. Why didn't we get one of those? Why did we get that system?" asked one high school teacher.
When STI was originally rolled out, it was not an online system. So even though CV Bethel was one of the original schools on the STI pilot, its system is not online to this day and its capabilities are below expectations. The original STI was a server based programme that could only be accessed on the internal network of an individual school, said a source. The company has upgraded since it was first contracted by the MOE, but its transition has not been seamless.
One primary school teacher said the problem of STI is the level of computer literacy amongst school administrators and teachers, and the level of access to computers at schools. He works at a primary school where STI is functioning. With more training he said the system could work, but there seems to be a lack of buy in from teachers, particularly the older ones, who "are not going to learn to use the computer just to use STI."
Director of Education Lionel Sands is not ashamed to admit, the STI system is not functioning in the way it ought to. Other high-ranking sources inside the ministry echoed his sentiment: "The contract that was negotiated with STI was not in the best interest of the department."
The cost of STI continues to grow each year without the concurrent increase in benefit. In fact, two of the original 20 STI schools were removed from the network and placed in the PowerSchool pilot. Just a few weeks ago, executives from STI were in the Bahamas having high level discussions with the MOE. They visit every year to be debriefed on the experience with the system locally.
"Of course this year was no different. We explained that we were not fully satisfied with where we were with respect to the number of schools that should have been involved in STI. We were not completely satisfied that it was operating the way we thought it should be operating. Even the schools that were on STI, they were still having problems over all of these years. We sought to explain that to them," said Mr Sands.
"Certainly we did not think that the license fee we were asked to pay was justifiable in light of the fact that we were not getting the full benefit of the system," he said.
Some details of the original STI contract remain sketchy. It was signed several years before Mr Sands assumed the directorship, so there are things he said he cannot fully explain, like what has been the exact cost outlay on STI. Sources claim $6 million and perhaps more was spent originally. Mr Sands was uncertain, but said the $6 million figure could be the cumulative cost over the years. One source, however, claimed there is missing documentation in the MOE concerning transactions related to the original STI license agreement.
According to sources close to the matter, the MOE lacked the internal expertise to effectively negotiate the original agreement. And to this day, one source said, the MOE does not have the internal technical expertise to manage the system.
If a school on the system experiences a server failure on report card day, for example, there is no system plan in place to solve that problem. This scenario played itself out in the past. The MOE has to give STI technicians an all-expense paid vacation in the Bahamas to handle any major technical problem that arise. The teachers who were originally trained to manage STI have since been redeployed to teach. Only one of the originally trained persons is still assigned to deal with STI.
When the STI system was implemented, there was "not a lot of forward thinking and planning", said the source. In some instances, for example, schools had to manually calculate the cumulative grade point averages for their finalizing students, because the STI system could not account for students' historical data. So STI report cards that were generated by the system had handwritten cumulative GPAs, according to a source. Details such as this were not taken into proper consideration in the first instance.
Further proof is the fact that to this day, all of the data on the STI system is stored off shore. In other words, the STI servers are located in the United States of America. And so a foreign country is housing government data on students in the 18 schools. Some have raised questions about the legality of that arrangement.
Mr Sands said he is not clear about how the data storage predicament came to be. As best as he can understand, he said at the time the system was launched, there was no local capacity to handle a server of that size. It was envisioned that the system would eventually migrate to the Bahamas.
The situation has somewhat changed today in that Cable Bahamas has the capacity and currently stores the data for public and private schools using the PowerSchool system. Mr Sands said localizing the MOE's database from the STI system is currently a high priority.
The bottom line in the STI saga seems to be a sense that STI should have delivered far more given the amount of time and money the government has invested in the system to date.
"We are supposed to be able now to say to a parent, if you want to see how your child is doing in school, just get online and you can see that without having to wait for report card day. That is what the system ought to be able to do. It is not doing that. Those are some of the challenges we are faced with," said Mr Sands.
"When I want to look at what a teacher is doing in a particular class I should be able to do that from my office computer, so I can see time on task; so I can see report cards being completed; so I can see how students are functioning; so I can see whether the curriculum is meeting the needs of the children. I don't have that with (the STI programme) even though it has the capacity to give me that," he said.
Fortunately, there is a silver lining for the 50,000 students in the public school system. The Director said he is still committed to getting it right and realizing the vision. And despite their frustrations, most of the stakeholders appear to be sold on the need to push forward.
"Working properly the system is very advantageous for us. I certainly would pursue something like that simply because I know the benefits of it. I have seen the benefits of it. We live in an age where we have to get away from doing all of these things manually. We can get it done with technology. There is a need no doubt about it," said Mr Sands.
So far the project has been moving at "snail's pace", said Mr Sands. There are 18 schools with STI out of 160 "over the past however long." With the speed of technological advancements, Mr Sands said he could only imagine what the MOE is missing out on. "We are still back in 2003/4 with technology of that time when we need 2011/12 technology," he said. That is another reason why the DOE wants to get it right this time around.
"That is why we want to make sure PowerSchool is giving us something that keeps us abreast and moves us. We want to make sure that as technology advances we are advancing with technology to get the best for our children. That is the bottom line. We want to see change in our instructional programmes. We want to see our student succeeding. We want to see administrators and teachers at their best using technology. We can't be in 1950 and expect that to happen in 2011," he said.
This time around the MOE has hired in the expertise. The DOE is currently using the technology consulting services of Deloitte and Touche to pilot PowerSchool. Mr Sands said he is comfortable saying, "The PowerSchool pilot has been a success", but that is not stopping the DOE from proceeding with due care.
"Our challenge is to be sure that if we were to go with PowerSchool for all of the other schools that we would get the kind of proposal from Deloitte that would be consistent with the service provided and not necessarily a money making venture for Deloitte, because you could have that whenever you have a monopoly. If you are the only person doing it you can charge me whatever you feel like simply because I need it and you are the only one doing it. And so we are very careful that we do not get into a situation where we are paying out more money than the service that we need," said Mr Sands.
"So what we are doing in addition to looking at Deloitte, we are looking at other companies that might be able to provide a similar service to see what their costing would be like, so we could compare proposals. Yes we are satisfied with Deloitte and PowerSchool, but we will not run headlong into Deloitte and PowerSchool, because we understand the nature of business. So we are cautious and will be cautious in doing that. We do not want to run the risk of doing a similar thing that STI did. Back then they saw something good that could come out of STI and they just ran with it. We want to be very careful," he said.
Deloitte and Touche was invited into the project through a recommendation by the Ministry of Finance, according to sources. The company is no stranger to government contracts. In fact, its managing partner Raymond Winder is one of the government's lead negotiators at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Sources claim, the Ministry of Finance took an interest because it was concerned about plugging the leak in STI expenditure.
The team at Deloitte operating the project, according to Tribune sources, is not off-shore, but rather "100 per cent Bahamian run", including their database administrators, security experts, project implementers and managers.
Donavan Morrison, IT Administrator at the Catholic Board of Education, said anyone running a project like PowerSchool should have expertise in areas like networking, system design, database systems, and web-based software.
"It requires a very in depth background when it comes to software development. You have to know for instance, what the server size needs to be are based on the bandwidth requirements. The person needs a huge background in networking and software implementation," he said.
There are a variety of "consulting shops" based in the Bahamas that have that type of expertise, according to sources, but not all of them are focused in the area needed by the MOE. IBM, for example, has the capacity; however, one source, with a stake in Deloitte, said, "They only sell hardware in the Bahamas."
Ernst & Young and PWC, have the capacity, but their local operation is built around auditing services, said the source. The same goes for KPMG, the consulting firm that handled the BTC sale. It focuses on "corporate finance", said the source.
The MOE has a major decision to make about pushing forward with its agenda. The best thing they can do to avoid creating any clouds of suspicion that could sour their chances at progress is to be more transparent than ever before. Government administrators should not be ashamed to speak about their past shortcomings or failures. It should be encouraged, so the public can have confidence in their ability to learn from the past.
So far, it appears that the muddy waters of the past seem to be settling. For now, in assessing the MOE's use of public funds to invest in student information software, I can say, we are not there yet, but it seems as though we are on our way to getting value for our money.
May 30, 2011
tribune242
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Male achievement in education is one of the more urgent challenges facing The Bahamas
PM Laments Low Male Achievers
BY ANDREW J.W. KNOWLES
jonesbahamas
With males comprising just 15 per cent of the College of The Bahamas (COB) graduates, Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham admits that male achievement in education becomes one of the more urgent challenges facing the country.
"We are all concerned, for example, that males now comprise only 15 per cent of COB’s graduates," Prime Minister Ingraham said.
"The imbalance between the number of female and male graduates speaks to a deeper and broader national problem of male educational achievement. The subject is ripe I believe, for study and research by COB as we seek to develop innovative and practical ideas on how we may address the gender gap as it begins to manifest at the primary and secondary levels of our school system."
His remarks came during the official opening ceremony of the $28 million Harry C. Moore Library and Information Centre last Friday morning at COB’s campus.
Recognising that male achievement touches on areas of national life from family life to crime prevention to economic development to public health, the prime minister said this "great national challenge" requires innovative and cross-disciplinary responses from fields such as sociology, social psychology, education, criminology, economics and other disciplines.
"If ever we needed to find innovative solutions to a critical national issue, we urgently need to do so on the challenge of boosting male achievement and reducing the level of criminality by young men."
"Even as the country turns to government and others for responses, it also increasingly turns to the institutions of higher learning to provide the research and ideas for innovation that will help us to collectively address this great challenge," the prime minister said.
Standing as a structure that promises to be a centre of excellence, learning, research and innovation, the library marks a milestone critical to the advancement of Bahamian scholarship and national development.
It also is a compelling milestone for COB as it continues to prepare itself to achieve university status.
Prime Minister Ingraham noted that the architectural vision and sweep of the centre serves to unify the college’s campus with entrances facing the entire college complex and surrounding neighbourhoods.
He also added that it points to a mission of outreach to the surrounding communities and also to a broader mission; one suggested by its technological capacity.
"This centre is host to a virtual library which is to connect and unify our far-flung island chain while also connecting the Bahamian archipelago to the world. The library will provide more than cutting-edge technology. It will help to preserve, inspire and advance the Bahamian imagination in every field of endeavour and scholarship. Indeed, the virtual library will significantly assist in the historic challenge of developing an archipelagic nation such as ours."
Proud that her husband’s dream of a library worthy of a university had been realised, Monique Moore said the modern structure would open the doors to new worlds of knowledge and prove that "the best things in life are worth waiting for."
"I am only sorry that Harry could not wait around long enough to see his dream become reality," Mrs. Moore said.
"He would be standing here, his slow smile breaking into a broad grin, that twinkle in his eye sparkling and he would nod his head in approval. Yes, he would say, this is good."
The elaborate library and information centre boasts a holdings capacity for 150,000 volumes, institutional archives and special collections and features a small auditorium, classrooms, media production studios, individual and group study spaces, support offices, a 24-hour Internet café and a museum commemorating the life of former Prime Minister the late Sir Lynden Pindling.
April 11th, 2011
jonesbahamas
BY ANDREW J.W. KNOWLES
jonesbahamas
With males comprising just 15 per cent of the College of The Bahamas (COB) graduates, Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham admits that male achievement in education becomes one of the more urgent challenges facing the country.
"We are all concerned, for example, that males now comprise only 15 per cent of COB’s graduates," Prime Minister Ingraham said.
"The imbalance between the number of female and male graduates speaks to a deeper and broader national problem of male educational achievement. The subject is ripe I believe, for study and research by COB as we seek to develop innovative and practical ideas on how we may address the gender gap as it begins to manifest at the primary and secondary levels of our school system."
His remarks came during the official opening ceremony of the $28 million Harry C. Moore Library and Information Centre last Friday morning at COB’s campus.
Recognising that male achievement touches on areas of national life from family life to crime prevention to economic development to public health, the prime minister said this "great national challenge" requires innovative and cross-disciplinary responses from fields such as sociology, social psychology, education, criminology, economics and other disciplines.
"If ever we needed to find innovative solutions to a critical national issue, we urgently need to do so on the challenge of boosting male achievement and reducing the level of criminality by young men."
"Even as the country turns to government and others for responses, it also increasingly turns to the institutions of higher learning to provide the research and ideas for innovation that will help us to collectively address this great challenge," the prime minister said.
Standing as a structure that promises to be a centre of excellence, learning, research and innovation, the library marks a milestone critical to the advancement of Bahamian scholarship and national development.
It also is a compelling milestone for COB as it continues to prepare itself to achieve university status.
Prime Minister Ingraham noted that the architectural vision and sweep of the centre serves to unify the college’s campus with entrances facing the entire college complex and surrounding neighbourhoods.
He also added that it points to a mission of outreach to the surrounding communities and also to a broader mission; one suggested by its technological capacity.
"This centre is host to a virtual library which is to connect and unify our far-flung island chain while also connecting the Bahamian archipelago to the world. The library will provide more than cutting-edge technology. It will help to preserve, inspire and advance the Bahamian imagination in every field of endeavour and scholarship. Indeed, the virtual library will significantly assist in the historic challenge of developing an archipelagic nation such as ours."
Proud that her husband’s dream of a library worthy of a university had been realised, Monique Moore said the modern structure would open the doors to new worlds of knowledge and prove that "the best things in life are worth waiting for."
"I am only sorry that Harry could not wait around long enough to see his dream become reality," Mrs. Moore said.
"He would be standing here, his slow smile breaking into a broad grin, that twinkle in his eye sparkling and he would nod his head in approval. Yes, he would say, this is good."
The elaborate library and information centre boasts a holdings capacity for 150,000 volumes, institutional archives and special collections and features a small auditorium, classrooms, media production studios, individual and group study spaces, support offices, a 24-hour Internet café and a museum commemorating the life of former Prime Minister the late Sir Lynden Pindling.
April 11th, 2011
jonesbahamas
Monday, March 28, 2011
...low college enrolment and graduation rates by Bahamian males at the College of the Bahamas (COB)
Only 14% of COB graduates are male students
By TANEKA THOMPSON
Tribune Staff Reporter
tthompson@tribunemedia.net
MALE students account for only 14 per cent of the graduates from the College of the Bahamas, says new COB President Dr Betsy Vogel Boze.
The statistic is evidence of a "frightening" development, mirrored in low college enrolment rates by Bahamian males while enrolment and graduation of their female counterparts continues to grow, she added. Her administration is to create a taskforce to tackle the problem and assess which social or environmental problems are behind the dismal rates.
"It's the males that I'm concerned about because only 14 per cent of our graduates are men and that's a shocking number. When I look at the numbers, the number of men has been fairly stable from the time we were created, there have been a few hundred more men but our growth has all been through the enrolment of women," she told a meeting of the Zonta Club at Luciano's restaurant yesterday.
"To only have 14 per cent of our graduates (as males) I think is a frightening number - what is happening to the Bahamian males?"
When asked by The Tribune what strategies she had planned to counteract this, Dr Boze said the problem needs a multi-faceted approach.
"I'm going to be putting together a task force and would welcome anybody's guidance on what is happening with the Bahamian males. Why are they dropping out because it's not a problem that happens once they get to us, they are not graduating at the same rates, they are not applying to college at the same rates and again that gap continues to widen.
"Does this have to do with gangs, or crime or drugs - I don't know what the problem is.
"I've also identified a prospective US partner in a city that is facing very similar challenges that we might be working with. Coming in as an outsider I don't dare say I understand what that problem is but I think we need to look at it from many different points of views and that education is just one of the symptoms of that."
COB has about 5,000 students enrolled at its main campus in Oakes Field and on the family islands but Dr Boze said enrolment is lower than other schools in the region.
"The Bahamas is actually losing ground compared to many of our Caribbean neighbours.
"We have fewer students engaged as a percentage than we did 20 years ago."
In her first public address since assuming her post about 10 weeks ago, Dr Boze also revealed that 80 per cent of COB students are enrolled in four-year baccalaureate programmes while the remaining 20 per cent are pursuing two-year associate degrees or master's programmes - an inversion of where the college was 10 years ago.
She added that COB is well on its way to achieving university status once a few additional benchmarks are met.
March 25, 2011
tribune242
By TANEKA THOMPSON
Tribune Staff Reporter
tthompson@tribunemedia.net
MALE students account for only 14 per cent of the graduates from the College of the Bahamas, says new COB President Dr Betsy Vogel Boze.
The statistic is evidence of a "frightening" development, mirrored in low college enrolment rates by Bahamian males while enrolment and graduation of their female counterparts continues to grow, she added. Her administration is to create a taskforce to tackle the problem and assess which social or environmental problems are behind the dismal rates.
"It's the males that I'm concerned about because only 14 per cent of our graduates are men and that's a shocking number. When I look at the numbers, the number of men has been fairly stable from the time we were created, there have been a few hundred more men but our growth has all been through the enrolment of women," she told a meeting of the Zonta Club at Luciano's restaurant yesterday.
"To only have 14 per cent of our graduates (as males) I think is a frightening number - what is happening to the Bahamian males?"
When asked by The Tribune what strategies she had planned to counteract this, Dr Boze said the problem needs a multi-faceted approach.
"I'm going to be putting together a task force and would welcome anybody's guidance on what is happening with the Bahamian males. Why are they dropping out because it's not a problem that happens once they get to us, they are not graduating at the same rates, they are not applying to college at the same rates and again that gap continues to widen.
"Does this have to do with gangs, or crime or drugs - I don't know what the problem is.
"I've also identified a prospective US partner in a city that is facing very similar challenges that we might be working with. Coming in as an outsider I don't dare say I understand what that problem is but I think we need to look at it from many different points of views and that education is just one of the symptoms of that."
COB has about 5,000 students enrolled at its main campus in Oakes Field and on the family islands but Dr Boze said enrolment is lower than other schools in the region.
"The Bahamas is actually losing ground compared to many of our Caribbean neighbours.
"We have fewer students engaged as a percentage than we did 20 years ago."
In her first public address since assuming her post about 10 weeks ago, Dr Boze also revealed that 80 per cent of COB students are enrolled in four-year baccalaureate programmes while the remaining 20 per cent are pursuing two-year associate degrees or master's programmes - an inversion of where the college was 10 years ago.
She added that COB is well on its way to achieving university status once a few additional benchmarks are met.
March 25, 2011
tribune242
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