The Ministry of Education is moving to make its newly developed digital reporting system mandatory for schools to report issues requiring attention and will shortly issue a circular making its use a legal requirement, Chief Education Officer Saddam Hussain said.
Hussain said the application was developed under the instructions of Education Minister Sonia Parag and is intended to allow school-related problems to be reported and addressed more quickly. He said he was very happy to share an app developed by the Ministry under the instructions of Sonia Parag that will attempt to collect all issues around schools and resolve them quickly.
Hussain said the new application will serve as the required channel for schools to report issues to the Ministry and the relevant education authorities. He said the system is intended to ensure that problems at schools are formally brought to the attention of the authorities so they can be addressed. Hussain told headmasters, head teachers, teachers in charge and principals that they must use the system to report complaints and issues at their schools. He said, “We cannot, we cannot, I repeat, we cannot fix issues which we do not know about. We have to be told and so we should be able to fix those issues once we are told.”
The system will be available to every school in Guyana. The system can be accessed by head teachers, teachers in charge and principals using their schools’ official email addresses.
Hussain demonstrated the process, showing that users must first select “Start a Report” and verify their identity using a code sent to the school’s official email address. Once logged in, the user selects the education region and the relevant school from a list of institutions. The user is required to describe the issue, identify the category of the complaint and indicate its level of urgency. Hussain used a broken pipe as an example, classified it as a water and sanitation issue and selected “immediate safety concern” as its level of importance. Users can upload photographs to support their reports before reviewing and submitting the complaint.
Complaints submitted through the system will be simultaneously flagged to education officials at the district, regional and national levels. According to Hussain, once a report is submitted it is sent to the respective District Education Officer, Regional Education Officer, Regional Executive Officer and the Ministry of Education. During the demonstration he said, “This issue has been submitted,” and explained that multiple levels of the education system are notified once a complaint is lodged. He said four officers at the Ministry of Education have been assigned to monitor the complaints and will follow up daily with the regions to determine whether reported issues have been resolved.
The new app was introduced following a flurry of complaints about problems at schools after the start of the new academic year.
