–          VP Jagdeo says

VICE President, Dr Bharrat Jagdeo, has highlighted the philosophy of the People’s Progressive Party Civic government to focus investments on educating the population.
Dr Jagdeo made this known while engaging youths during the final day of the Guyana Energy Conference and Supply Chain Expo’s student forum.

At the time, the Vice President was responding to a question posed on his advice for high school students interested in pursuing careers in energy engineering and supply chain.
Against this backdrop, he noted that many opportunities are available for students across the country in traditional tertiary education, technical vocational studies and even scholarship opportunities.

Speaking on some of these opportunities, he stated that the facility at Port Mourant was currently being expanded to facilitate major training there for the types of jobs that pay huge sums of money in the sector and not just technical and vocational training.

To this end, he indicated that students in Berbice are uniquely placed even as the facility will have dormitories for students from other regions.

Further to this, the Vice president indicated that in terms of scholarships, the government promised 20,000 online scholarships in 2020 and was able to fulfil around 28,000 in the first four years.

He noted that the relevant authorities have done a great job of putting that programme together, which includes vast areas of studies at all levels following high school.

“Once our kids want to study, anybody for that matter, the government will support you; we will pay for that scholarship, that’s where we want to invest our resources,” The Vice President said.
He went on to add, “There’ll be no restriction on the amount of money that we will spend on educating our people, there’s no restriction on that, that’s a philosophy of our government.”
This year, Dr Jagdeo indicated that on investment in high schools or high school students, he said that the government is spending nearly two and a half times more per pupil in public education than it costs parents to pay for private tuition.

Additionally, he said that significant investments are being made in facilities too and as such they are also looking at the curricula delivery methods at various schools that could bring improved output.

Further to this, he disclosed that a new E-School model is being worked on currently as the government intends in the future to have families, and children choose whether they would prefer going to a physical institution or schooling online.