Georgetown: Education Minister Priya Manickchand has announced that the US$10 million project which is aimed at boosting students’ performance in Mathematics will be rolled out in the New Year.
Manickchand on Friday gave reporters a detailed overview of the initiative which is part of the Guyana Secondary Education Improvement Project (GSEIP).
The GSEIP is a World Bank funded project that primarily targets the method of teaching Mathematics in secondary schools across the country.
According to Manickchand, to enable the success of the project, US$ 1.8 million from the total sum has been set aside to boost the capacities of Mathematics teachers, which need to be enhanced.
This would see teachers being trained in Mathematics content and also how that content is to be effectively taught or portrayed to students to secure better feedback in the classrooms.
A second area that will be addressed in the project is the general facilities available at secondary schools to enable the effective transmission of lectures and Math modules to students.
According to the Education Ministry’s website, 75,000 secondary school students nationwide are to benefit from the project, along with approximately 800 secondary level Mathematics teachers.
The failure rate for Mathematics remains over 50 per cent, but this year saw an encouraging nine per cent increase compared to the 28.9 per cent pass rate achieved in 2013.
Minister Manickchand has made Mathematics a special study over the last few years in a bid to improve the pass rate of students writing the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) examinations.
She had expressed frustration at one time over the static state or slow pace the pass rate was moving every year, particularly last year when the pass rate had decreased to 29.92 per cent from 30 per cent in 2012.
Nevertheless, the Minister had initiated a series of programmes and plans to “get back to the drawing board” to address the problem.
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