–Caribbean countries express interest in Guyana’s training programme
WITH the expansion of the teacher’s training programme in Guyana, over 4,000 teachers have been trained between 2020 and 2024, with even Caribbean nations expressing interest in the country’s teachers training programme.
This was according to Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand this during the presentation of the Education Ministry’s 2024 annual report.
She said: “We have trained over the last four years, 4,378 teachers, and this is more than double what we trained between 2015 and 2020.”

Since entering office in 2020, she noted that the Cyril Potter College of Education (CPCE) was closed due to COVID pandemic, but there was no prospect of when it would reopen as since the college existed it had always been in-person.
While noting that there was no technology infused in that aspect of the education sector, she said that there would be a time when there would be no COVID and gatherings were going to be allowed again and as such there should be some training for teachers.
“So we got to find a way to train. Let’s take this college online,” she said in reflection on past challenges.
However, before the platform was taken online, she added that the college was only able to admit or graduate at a given year, some 535 teachers.
Manickchand said, now the institution is now seeing some 2,000 or more teachers graduating.
“That means higher quality and a higher number quantitatively. So, you have more teachers and you have better-trained teachers,” the minister added.
However, the impact of this programme being online, she said, stretches even further and highlighted the issue of the trained teacher certificate which almost all hinterland teachers were doing in the past as that was the only programme that was accessible to them.
That programme, she said, would involve teachers doing three years and then a further three years at the University of Guyana to get their degree in education.
“So, what we had was a lot of untrained teachers in the hinterland, because you have to leave your three-month-old baby and come here and spend six years to get a degree. That was not what was happening… on the coast it was four years,” she said.
Manickchand added that as soon as the associate degree programme was opened to the hinterland, they saw an almost zeroing of the numbers of teachers who were doing the trained teacher certificate, and these persons are now graduating with their associate degree and moving on to the university of Guyana in a shorter time.
“So what you saw, what that story tells us is teachers of the hinterland were always capable of doing the degree programme. They were always qualified to do the degree programme, but they had no access to that degree programme, which means they were forced to either take longer to graduate and enjoy the benefits of a graduate, or two, not pursue the programme, so that they couldn’t get the benefits of being a trained teacher,” Manickchand added.
While this was hailed as a remarkable success, the Education Minister added that because the programme is now online, at least two Caribbean countries have approached Guyana and asked how their teachers could benefit from the nation’s programme.
She said, “[They] have asked how they could send their teachers, much smaller numbers than ours, could benefit from this online training that we have and that is something we’re currently exploring with them, because of course you know Guyana once we have something, we share it.”