80 per cent trained teachers likely in five years – Minister Manickchand
January 12, 2014, By chris, Filed Under News, Source
Some of the teachers who graduated last year
Although the public education system, as at the end of last year, boasted a near 75 per cent trained teacher rate, there are moves apace to ensure that this is augmented way before 2020.
Minister of Education Priya Manickchand speaking to media operatives recently said, “We will have before the next five years at least 80 per cent of our teachers trained.”
In lauding the role of the lone teachers’ training college, the Cyril Potter College of Education (CPCE), for last year churning out a large number of teachers, the Minister said that the institution had in effect enabled the public education sector to have the greatest number of trained teachers. Of the 336 teachers who graduated last year, 74 are trained to deliver early childhood education, 110 are trained to deliver primary education and 152 are trained for the secondary level.
According to Minister Manickchand, this development is undoubtedly as a direct result of the strategic move by the Education Ministry to introduce the Associate Degree in Education programme for teachers at CPCE two years ago.
“Teachers are now more likely to be graduate teachers than just trained teachers which we hope would allow them not only the privilege of being personally improved… having graduate status, but our classrooms are going to get more expertise than they presently have,” Manickchand assuredly asserted.
And the increased expertise is particularly needed, as according to the Minister, the subject areas of Mathematics, English and Science continue to be “hard to crack…across the world for whatever reason. We have noted that as a country and a Region,” she added.
Moreover, she insisted that when students in Guyana achieve a mere 35 per cent in the area of Mathematics, for instance, the similar results are in fact obtained in every Caribbean country.
“Some Caribbean countries are spending triple what we are spending on each student…that leads me to think it has little to do with interest in investment,” Manickchand reflected.
She added, “I think everybody is trying to break the back of these bad results, but we have to look at more innovative things; to teach and learn through computer programmes to make it more interesting to this generation.”
As such, the Minister noted that moves have been made to look keenly at the areas of weaknesses, and a lot of work has been focused in this regard. But according to her, “these things don’t make headlines or stories even…this is such a hard area that even journalists don’t want to tackle it.”
In the quest to improve its delivery of education, the past year saw the Ministry conducting a study in the primary sector – Grades One through Six – in an attempt to assess what children in those Grades know as far as the literacy standards are concerned.
Minister Manickchand disclosed that at the moment the education sector is in conformity with international literacy standards even as she divulged that “we created tests across the Grades and administered those tests across the country to determine where it is our children are regarding meeting the international literacy standards.”
According to the Minister, the Ministry is using the results that are obtained in the sector, as a critical measure of its progression, even as she pointed out that “while we know that results are not the only indicator, we certainly cannot discount results as an indicator. We are doing the best that we have ever done as a country,” she confidently stated.