Ndw Minister of Education

BERNARD SHAM LAYE - NEW MINISTER OF EDUCATION

The new Minister of Education, Mr Bernard Sham Laye is not known to be a blinkered party (SPPF) stalwart. He grew up one of six children of second generation Chinese immigrants. His father owned a shop on the corner of Revolution Avenue (formerly Royal Street) and Harrison St. His father died prematurely, when Bernard was still in primary school.

Sham Laye went to a grant aided primary school where one paid nothing. These schools belonged to the Catholic Church but the government – colonial as well as the first sovereign government at Independence - paid the entire cost of educating the children registered there. After the coup d’état Albert Rene compulsorily took all the church property on which these schools stood and made sure those that had names of Catholic Saints had those names changed.

After primary school Sham Laye sat the Seychelles College Entrance Examination, like many of his contemporaries. Everyone who obtained a distinction in the standard six examination set by the Department of Education was automatically eligible to sit the Entrance Exam which was common exam for Seychelles College (reserved for boys) and the Regina Mundi (reserved for girls).

Although he did not succeed at first, he was able to continue in the Special Standard Six – a special classroom at the Seychelles College Primary where students who had initially not obtained the grades (65%) to pass the Entrance Exam, but was within its vicinity, would spend a year being prepared for next year’s exam. The Regina Mundi had the same programme. Although both Seychelles College and the Regina Mundi Convent were fee paying private schools, Sham Laye and all those in similar financial circumstances, received a government bursary. In the class of 1964, the year Sham Laye entered secondary school, perhaps 50% were bursers, despite Albert Rene’s demagogical politics at that time.

A bright student at the College, Sham Laye could, with his A-level grades, have been admitted to any of the most prestigious universities in UK such as Oxford or Cambridge. He went to Edinburgh – a prestigious university all the same – to take history, all paid for by the British Government. He returned home to become a history teacher. At the time of the coup d’etat he was lecturer at the Seychelles Teacher’s Training College. Today it has a much more academic sounding name of National Institute of Education (NIE).

Within three years of the coup d’etat, Albert Rene closed the Seychelles College and Regina Mundi. Today the latter is the Ministry of Education and Sham Laye is its Minister. His PS had the privilege to have had her secondary education in this complex. She was no doubt one who benefited from a government bursary. But Sham Laye cut his education administrative skills at the National Youth Service (NYS) at Port Launay. One doesn’t know if Sham Laye approved of the NYS. It didn’t matter. One did what Albert Rene told one to do.

The Ministry of Education is a vast bureaucracy. According to the National Statistical Bureau (NSB), in 2005 it employed an average of 2462 people paying out annual wages totaling over SR 108 million. This vast bureaucracy oversees the teaching of most of our children from the age of 7½ years to 17 years. You would not know from its website how many of our children are in their charge at any one time. There, the bureaucracy speaks only about itself and its lofty mission statement. NSB statistics, however, tell us that the number of children between the age of 7 and 17 numbers just under 15,000. Almost 100% of the children attend schools, a record that predates the law of compulsory education which came into force during the one-party state.

On its website the Ministry of Education describes its mission statement as follows:

The mission of the Ministry of Education is to build a coherent and comprehensive system of quality education and training, reflecting shared universal and national values, which will promote the integrated development of the person and empower him/her to participate fully in social and economic development.

What does that mission statement really mean in practical terms? Who measures whether this mission has or is being accomplished? Who is this Ministry accountable to? Is it necessary for the government itself to own the schools, employ the teachers, import or produce the books and materials to achieve those aims? These are legitimate questions that should preoccupy the whole society not just the Ministry or the ruling party.

Sham Laye inherits an education policy virtually set during the one-party state bar the NYS. Results so far are nothing to write home about. Employers complain that the level of basic education is too low especially in English language and mathematics. This means that the level of the future income of today’s students would be lower than it ought to be.

Yet the Ministry in its website states the principles of education in Seychelles as “In a world where market forces and advances in communication technology are accelerating the trend towards globalization …. One of the main challenges for young people is to play their part as dynamic agents of change…” The vast majority of our children who leave school today are not equipped with the tools to meet the challenges of globalisation, despite all the propaganda. The economic condition of the country makes matters worse. As a member of the Cabinet, Sham Laye should tell President Michel as much.

As he rightly pointed out to the SBC reporter, his appointment is not a reward for party loyalty, but a challenge to create a new generation who could be like him when he was their age but with the wherewithal and knowledge of the 21st Century. Sham Laye can be an agent of change rather than just someone in passing in today’s political firmament. That’s his challenge. I wish him well and look forward to engage with him in debates about the best education for our children.

Paul Chow

(The writer was a classmate of Minister Sham-Laye at Seychelles College.)