–Min. Manickchand announces, as MoE grapples with new ways of delivering quality education

IN light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ministry of Education (MoE) will be looking to implement a number of innovative activities that highlight new methods of teaching during this year’s “Education Month” activities.

This year the month is aptly being celebrated under the theme, “Finding solutions to deliver quality education, and broadening opportunities in 2020”.
“This year, Education Month comes at a time when the delivery of education is threatened because of the COVID-19 pandemic. But it allows us an opportunity to highlight the new methods of teaching, and that’s what we’re going to be doing, because there are opportunities for us to deliver in a more effective and modern manner than we were delivering before,” Minister of Education Priya Manickchand shared in an interview with the Guyana Chronicle on Friday.
Celebrated annually throughout the month of September, “Education Month” is customarily a time used to raise awareness about the importance of education, and the placement of education in society, with a number of activities that bring out the theme of the month.

“We see us delivering education in a multi-faceted approach, Minister Manickchand said. “So the efforts of Education Month is to deliver education to all our people, using different methods; either print material or ICT. We’re also going to see a new and improved way of communicating in the ministry, and this is going to be a new normal, even post-COVID-19,” she said, adding:

“This year, the focus will be about delivering education, using ICT. How do we do that effectively? How do we connect our teachers and our students? How can we deliver education, using various means? It was not a shock to our system that we could not have absorbed and respond to [the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic].”

Though the ministry is expected to release the full Calendar of Activities in the coming week, it has already begun rolling out some of those that will be part of the celebration. The Minister noted that one of the biggest things coming out this month will be a multi-partner ICT training initiative for teachers as well as the general public.

On Friday, the Ministry announced a partnership with the Commonwealth of Learning to offer “Free Access to 4000 Online Courses”, which will see courses being offered by ‘Ivy League’ and other reputable universities.

“This year, you will see some traditional- type activities that would just move over to the virtual platform, such as the Debating and Art Competitions. But then we have some new ones like children being able to ask questions about COVID19 and their concerns,” Minister Manickchand noted.
With heightened focus on alternative avenues of education delivery, the minister noted that in addition to the upgrading of programming on the Learning Channel, there will also be an updating of the Ministry’s various Online platforms, including its YouTube page.

“We will roll out a full timetable on the Learning Channel, where we are going to have enough to engage children for every grade each day, for six days a week,” Minister Manickchand said. “We will also be boosting the website, which had begun in 2014, but hadn’t grown the way it should have grown; with friendly content,” she added.

General Secretary for the Guyana Teachers’ Union, Coretta McDonald noted that the Union will also be using Education Month to highlight how the COVID-19 situation has propelled education delivery to a new level.

“With this Education Month,” McDonald said, “there’s a special opportunity to focus and reflect on what was done before, and how we can go forward, at the level of teachers, management, and students.”