A recent study has shown that Guyana is well on its way to achieving universal secondary education (USE), having already achieved universal primary education.

While this achievement is welcome it is hardly surprising, because this government has been making uncompromising efforts to continuously improve and upgrade our education system which was put into tatters by its predecessor.
Under the PPP government in the early 1960s, the education sector made enormous strides, particularly during the stewardship of then Education Minister Cedric Vernon Nunes. It was during this period that we saw secondary schools in the rural communities springing up and the University of Guyana established. It was also during this time that Guyana became the most literate country in the English-speaking Caribbean.
In fact, one of the absurdities witnessed when the PPP was ousted out of office was the closure of the secondary school at Zeelugt, East bank Essequibo by the new government , which was converted to a primary school. Perhaps the first time anywhere in the world such a thing happened. This was one of the many secondary schools which were established during Nunes’s era. It served the entire East bank Essequibo, and students from Leguan and West Coast Demerara.
So the PPP has had a long tradition of placing tremendous emphasis on education because it recognises that education is the major tool in eradicating poverty and accelerating socio-economic development.
Following the historic October 5, 1992 electoral victory, the PPP began where it left off in the early 1960s, but the task ahead was a herculean one because the education system was in tatters and on the verge of collapse. With dilapidated school buildings everywhere, an inadequate amount of schools, an acute shortage of learning materials and teachers and low morale among the latter.
A former PNC education minister even admitted that the education system was producing “functional illiterates.”
However, through visionary, innovative, creative policies and programmes and unswerving commitment to continuously improve our education, remarkable achievements have been made in this regard.
One would be foolish to say that our education system is in perfect shape, but it would be equally foolish to deny that there has not been significant improvement in the last 15 years.
What is even more remarkable about the significant strides in the education sector is the terrible state it was in by 1992.
Therefore, achieving universal primary education and being on the way to achieving USE is no mean achievement, especially when one considers that many countries which are better off economically have not achieved this distinction.
An overwhelming majority of illiterate adults in the world live in developing countries (99%). With 287 million illiterate adults, India alone houses almost 37% of the world’s total. This fact alone has entrenched a strong, tenacious belief that illiteracy only concerns the least developed countries or only immigrant populations in developed countries. Indeed, conventional literacy data tend to depict an idyllic situation in developed countries, showing levels of adult literacy reaching 100%.
However, more exhaustive national and international surveys show that this is far from the truth.
As the 2012 Education for All Global Monitoring Report shows, there remains considerable numbers of illiterate adults in these countries, including in France, that are still not receiving the necessary attention. The persistence of illiteracy in Europe is also highlighted in a Report by a group of high-level experts within the EU,. According to this report, in Europe, 75 million people do not have the basic skills they need to get by independently in today’s modern world.