IN keeping with government’s vision for an improved and innovative education sector, Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand, on Monday, disclosed the ministry’s plan to ensure all teachers are trained.

According to the minister, the education system in the past 15 years has seen the percentage of trained teachers remaining consistently in the 70s, fluctuating by three to five per cent every year.

She noted that the recorded fluctuation can be attributed to the migration of teachers as well as deaths or teachers moving to the private sector.
The Cyril Potter College of Education (CPCE) has gone fully online to offer training to Guyanese with over 2,500 first-year students enrolling, a figure which is five times the usual number.

“The CPCE is the only teachers’ training centre in the country. Usually about 535 students are accepted for face-to-face learning every year. This year, because we have gone online, we have about 2,500 students who have begun their first-year learning…Guyana is going to be fine because we are going to be putting out more teachers than we’ve ever done before,” said Minister Manickchand.

She said that, currently, there are teachers in the system who are untrained but they have already been informed that they are to commence the required training.

“There are two types of untrained teachers teaching, those who have qualifications that can get them into the college but never really bothered, probably because of economic and other reasons, and there are teachers who are in the classroom who do not have the eligibility criteria to get into the college… We are upgrading those teachers so that they can get into the college,” the Education Minister stated.

She noted that moving the college online has given hinterland teachers the opportunity to enroll in the Associate Degree in Education programme rather than the Trained Teacher’s Certificate (TTC) programme which, previously, was the only programme accessible to them if they were willing to leave their homes and attend face-to-face classes at the college.

“Hinterland teachers across the country, we have seen a remarkable drop. We used to have about three hundred and thirty-something teachers doing the Trained Teacher’s Certificate (TTC) programme as opposed to the Associate Degree programme. Before 2020, the TTC programme was the only programme offered to hinterland teachers,” she added.

She noted that while there are challenges in terms of connectivity and access to devices, the ministry is currently working to have those addressed.
Minister Manickchand said that the aim is to have 100 per cent of the teachers in classrooms enrolled in a programme at CPCE by the end of the first semester in 2022.