Georgetown:
“Forget who does the teaching, at the end of the day if our children can get a good pass mark that is the important thing. These are the children who will be our future so we have to examine different and new ways of making sure that we can achieve the results we are looking for.” This candid assertion was made by Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand, even as she commented on a proposal that was made last year to import Mathematics and Science teachers.
Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr. Roger Luncheon, at a press briefing in February of last year made reference to the decision that was made by Government to import teachers to teach the two crucial subject areas. The decision, which had initially received some flak from the Colin Bynoe headed Guyana Teachers Union, was made in recognition of the fact that Guyana did not have sufficient qualified teachers in the two areas to teach the nation’s students in order to secure satisfactory pass rates, Dr. Luncheon had noted.
However, the Minister of Education, who was appointed in December 2011 by President Donald Ramotar, in an invited comment recently said that the Government is prepared to do whatever it takes to ensure that children are given the needed assistance and by extension the best possible chance to do well while in the public education system. “I wouldn’t call it importing…If we don’t have the expertise to help our children and our teachers we need to examine new methods to ensure that they do. We have always done that…I remember having a Sri Lankan teacher in Primary School so there are different things we can do.”
“I see it as improving the skills-set of our country with a view to making sure our children do well,” Manickchand noted.
The proposal to import teachers has also been linked to the migration of qualified teachers which has over the years left a gapping void in the public education system. But according to Minister Manickchand the migration situation is certainly not unique to Guyana even as she pointed out that the world today can be considered a “little global village. We have people moving all over, even from the United States to different parts of the world for many different reasons…for some it is financial, for others it is exploratory and for some other people it is just for the experience. This is the cost of globalization; people wanting to migrate and travel and so on…”
Addressing this challenge, the Minister noted, is to ensure that there are always an adequate amount of trained teachers to cater to the needs of the public education system even as she noted that at this juncture the sector can boast of having the most trained teachers in the country’s history. “What we have to do is to take that up to almost 100 per cent where we have excess so that we cater for those teachers who want to join the global effort of moving on…”
And there are already measures that are being examined by the Ministry of Education, Manickchand said. The Ministry’s efforts are however not limited to training additional teachers but there are also measures apace to ensure that the quality of teachers’ lives are improved. This approach, she said, had commenced with former Minister of Education, Shaik Baksh, and will undoubtedly be sustained. “It wouldn’t stop here I am currently looking at some of the things we can do now to make it easier for teachers but at the end of the day it has to be the passion for teaching that attracts someone to the profession.”
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