Guyana Basic Education Teacher Training Project (GBET) Director, Ms. Susan Sproule, has reported the programme achieved all its planned targets since it started a decade ago.

That initiative will expire in October next year.

Speaking at a recent function at the Cyril Potter College of Education (CPCE) Turkeyen Campus, Greater Georgetown, Sproule said through the Distance Education Foundation Programme, some 349 teacher trainees were upgraded to pursue studies at the college.

“Through the Distance Education Early Childhood and Primary Certificate Programme, approximately 970 teachers have, over the four implementation years to date, successfully completed programmes. These teachers are all now trained teachers,” she disclosed.

The GBET Director noted too that 843 education managers successfully completed the Distance Education Management Programme which is now being sustained by the National Centre for Educational Resource Department (NCERD).

In addition, she said that the institutional capacity of the project’s main stakeholder institution, CPCE, has been strengthened.

But the Director contended the most notable achievement was the establishment of eight hinterland in-service centres, providing access to teacher training programmes offered by CPCE through the distance education programme.

“As a result, we have supported the Ministry of Education in decreasing the number of untrained teachers in the hinterland, assisted in the alleviation of poverty, and addressed, to some extent, gender equality issues in hinterland communities.

“Through improving systems of education delivery in hinterland communities, we are raising the standard of living. We now have empirical evidence that these results do, indeed, have an important impact on the improvement of social and economic conditions in the communities that GBET has touched,” Sproule emphasised.

The Canadian Agency for International Development (CIDA) in 2007 approved an extension of the GBET project to further strengthen basic education teacher training systems in Guyana.

GBET recently launched its distance education Academic Certificate Programme, an addition to the Early Childhood and Primary distance education programmes previously launched.

The goal of the programme is to improve the quality of basic education in Guyana by strengthening the basic education teacher training systems.

To achieve this goal, the project has focused on four main components namely:

* the development and implementation of a Distance Education Foundation Programme for unqualified teachers, mainly in the hinterland and deep riverain areas of Regions One, Two, Seven, Eight and Nine;

* the development and implementation of Distance Early Childhood and Primary Teachers Certificate Programmes;

* the development and piloting of a Distance Education Management Programme; and

* strengthening the capacity of CPCE to write, manage and deliver the distance education programmes.