– chief education officer

CHIEF Education Officer (CEO) Marcel Hutson said a number of steps are being taken to enhance Technical, Vocational Education and Training (TVET) and in the years ahead, it is likely that centres will be established in every region.

Speaking to Guyana Chronicle recently, Hutson said expansion of TVET in the school system is a matter engaging the Ministry of Education’s attention.

“For the very first time, an extensive training programme will be instituted so that we will have enough teachers to go to these [hinterland] regions,” Hutson said, adding: “So persons from the regions can actually come to the Cyril Potter College of Education (CPCE), be trained, and go back to establish those institutions because we can’t set up institutions without trained staff.”

Currently in the school system, there is already the Secondary Competency Certificate Programme (SCCP), which targets students who are less academically inclined. The programme also seeks to stem the dropout rate in the school system.

Through the SCCP, students learn employable skills in a variety of technical areas including carpentry, masonry and cake decoration, and according to the chief education officer, while not every region has a TVET institute, the SCCP in a way will be filling this gap in the outlying regions.

“What’s going to happen in the future, once we would have accumulated all the staff and necessary resources, [is that] we could very well find that there is a Government Technical Institute in every region,” the CEO said, noting, “We’ve started the work and it is just a matter of time before we see the fruits of our labour.”

He hailed TVET as a crucial component of education, particularly in this modern knowledge-driven society and given the discovery of oil off-shore Guyana.

And on this note, he said the CPCE ‘satellite centres’ in hinterland regions can be tapped for the delivery of TVET.

“[Establishing satellite centres] has not started with TVET as yet, but it has started with people who are into mainstream teaching,” he said, while noting that “It is something that we will mirror as we move along in TVET, but for now, the SCCP functions in a manner of bringing TVET to the regions by the school system.”