Education Minister, Ms Priya Manickchand was yesterday compelled to put pen to paper to set the record straight about what transpired at a meeting called by her ministry at Queen’s College to learn

how participants felt about the thorny issues of automatic promotion and corporal punishment.
Her decision was in response to an article carried in yesterday’s edition of the Stabroek News which implied at first blush that a squabble over food, or the non-provision thereof, caused participants to abort the meeting midway and stage a walkout.
The following is the full text of her response:
“The Stabroek News published the most bizarre headline in the newspaper of 22nd September 2012.  It read ‘City Teachers divided over automatic promotion – walkout over food aborts corporal punishment discussion’.
The event reported on was a consultation hosted by the Ministry of Education regarding automatic promotion and corporal punishment.
In attendance were officials of the Ministry of Education, The Guyana Teachers Union, Teachers and Head-teachers from all over Georgetown, and several members of the press, two of whom I recognised as Kwesi Anthony Isles and Trevor Lakhram Bhagirat. There were also cameras there, including one from the Prime News, which would have captured the entire event. The Editor/Management of SN may wish to view this event for him/herself.
At about 12:30pm (and NOT 1:30pm as reported by the SN), the President of the GTU, Mr Colin Bynoe made the timely and welcome observation that we were moving onto another topic, but that as a ministry, we were failing to respect the need for teachers to have a lunch period.
I recognised that fact as true and  apologised. I then submitted the option to the participants there to abort the exercise and return another day. Some teachers chose that option, while a larger number, in my view, abstained from choosing.
I decided to abort the exercise and return another day, thanked the participants for attending, and assured them that the contributions would inform our decision on the way forward.
There was absolutely no walkout or anything resembling a walkout as reported by the SN. It is insulting to all the teachers who were there, and even those who were not there, to suggest that teachers would be so indisciplined and unconcerned about these most important issues to have walked out of this consultation “over food” as the SN vulgarly and untruthfully published.
How is anyone of the hundreds who were present there ever to believe anything published in this paper again if a retraction is not forthcoming.
I expect the SN to offer an apology to all involved for this most inaccurate publication.

Sincerely
Priya Manickchand