…says more schools, curriculum reform coming

By Vanessa Braithwaite
MINISTER of Education Dr Nicolette Henry on Wednesday said the coalition government has started an education revolution here, outlining a range of programmes in place to fix a sector she said “was in a mess for 23 years.”

Speaking after PPP frontbencher Priya Manickchand, Dr Henry in her budget debate contribution told the House that the sector, which will receive a budgetary allocation of $52B for 2019, has seen nothing but progress from the nursery stage to the university.
This she said, is evident in the statistical update of the United Nation’s Human Development Index (HDI), which reports a value of 0.674%, which represents a performance increase of 21.5%. “Guyana would have therefore recorded progress in each of the health and education indicators and this covers the period 1999-2017 and yet we heard how we have retrogressed.”

She said that there is no amount of propaganda from the PPP that can swallow the stories of progress her ministry has made since the coalition government took office in 2015. She said a plethora of programmes were rolled out in less than four years which she credited for the significant progress in the education sector. These include the 5Bs and the school-feeding programmes which contributed to reported increases in school attendance and decreases in school dropouts and truancy. Also noticeable she said, is the increase in performance in not only the NGSA but CSEC. “In 2014…23% of students were passing English….in three short years, we have seen incremental improvement and this year we were able to record 60% pass rate in English.” “Our current data indicate that 90% of our children now master reading and math skills, compared to 37% in 2016. This is a story that speaks for itself.” Dr Henry said performance can also be credited to extensive reform in the school’s curriculum, which has been completed after extensive consultation.

Henry also spoke about the recent launch of the mobile counselling service and reintegrating teenage mothers into the school system. She said after a hiatus of more than a decade, in 2018, the teacher’s upgrading programme was re-introduced in Region Eight; and the introduction of technical and vocational programmes were done at the Cyril Potter College of Education (CPCE), as well as special education needs programme, were piloted in Regions Two, Four and 10.

23 years of mess
With regard to the University of Guyana, Dr Henry said progress was seen in the construction of new offices and a new math and science building at Turkeyen. Multiple agreements were also signed to further strengthen international relationships. These achievements, she said, were made despite the current administration “taking over 23 years of mess.”

However, Manickchand said that the ministry is manned by petty leadership and all that has occurred over the past three years is regression. Citing that she is very proud of the PPP’s stewardship, Manickchand cited reports to show that in the ministry under her stewardship there were serious gaps in nursery education delivery amongst other things, but that a hands-on and collaborative approach was taken to tackle these gaps and these approaches reaped positive results. She does not believe that the same is being done today. While hailing the $52 B allocation to the sector, Manickchand said the main beneficiaries will not be the pupils and students, since most of the money is going towards operational costs amongst other things. She said that the ministry sent back $2B from the 2018 budget, which sum could have been used to pay an increase to protesting teachers, purchase text books for children or fund the $10, 000 cash grants made available under the PPP only once, mere months before the 2015 elections. The cash grant was an elections token, which Dr Henry described as a gimmick that was not sustainable.
Dr Henry however rebutted Manickchand’s claims, stating it is under her watch that the long-standing issue of “debunching” arrears for teachers was resolved, even as she described the cash grant as a mere election gimmick that was not sustainable. “In my sector alone, we have spent an inordinate amount of time cleaning up the mess we have inherited from the last 23 years…we took over an education sector that was in a crisis.”
Much in store for 2019

With the $52 B, Dr Henry revealed that there is much in store for the education sector in Guyana. For the first time, she said there will be the implementation of robotics, coding and animation in primary schools across Guyana. This will be implemented simultaneously with smart classrooms, IT hubs and IT labs, since technology-enabled learning is paramount in this technological era. Twenty-eight primary schools in Regions One, Four, Six and 10 will benefit from additional computer resources. New programmes will be offered such as an Associate Degree in Petroleum Engineering, Community Development and Food Sciences at the University of Guyana. Henry said that the education revolution was started by the coalition government and will be continued in 2019 with the construction of schools, curriculum reform, psychological and other support services, teachers’ preparation and support, school feeding programmes, technical and vocational programmes among others. Henry said that these would have only been possible through her one-seat majority government, which the opposition speaks so lowly about. Concerning that one seat, she said, “If you want to know the importance of a year, ask the student who failed an exam. If you want to know the importance of a month, ask the mother who gave premature birth. If you want to know the importance of a minute, ask the person who just missed their flight. If you want to know the importance of a millisecond, ask the Olympics sprinter who won the silver medal. If you want to know the importance of a seat, ask the PPP.”