– as $32.3B approved

Following copious scrutinising questions from the Parliamentary Opposition, the $32.3 billion allocated to the Ministry of Education was on Wednesday approved by the National Assembly, effectively dodging the threat of being slashed from the 2014 National Budget.

The passage of the Ministry’s allocation is expected to clear the way for a number of projects to be implemented, including the newest feature of a $10,000 grant to parents to cater to the schooling needs of each of the their children attending public schools.  This will of course be in addition to the school uniform voucher and the other support that have been afforded by Government in the past.

In fact, the Minister has asserted that with the passage of the allocation “we can move assiduously on some of the key areas such as, the improvement of infrastructure, curriculum development, revising and establishing new learning materials, teacher training, special education, information and communication technologies, among others earmarked in our Strategic Plan 2014-2018.”
She is moreover convinced that the sector, and by extension the country, is poised for further ‘positive impact’ which will lend to further growth.

The Minister during her contribution to the Budget debate on Monday made a point of emphasizing that although plausible improvements have been realised in the Education Sector, particularly in terms of examination results, “we are not happy with 34 per cent pass in English, we want to see 100 per cent of our children that we enroll and sign up for exams passing.  We will get there because we can; we can plan for it, we can strategise for it and we will fund it,” said the Minister as she appealed for good sense to prevail among the Opposition to facilitate the approval of her Ministry’s allocation.
“It is we that can be trusted to take the nation’s children forward, we have shown how we can do that,” added a passionate Manickchand.

According to her, the Education Ministry has not been silent about the results obtained in Mathematics and English at the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examination but has openly spoken of its concerns relating to these results. “We tell the nation how unhappy we are with some of these grades…” said Manickchand as she noted that the results have not all been daunting.  “We know last year that out of eight awards granted by the Caribbean Examination Council, our Guyanese children were given five…” recalled Manickchand.

She went on to remind the House of the performance of Yogeeta Persaud of the Anna Regina Multilateral School, who was bestowed with the award for Best Overall Student; and the fact that Cecil Cox and Sasha Woodruff, both of Queen’s College, won awards for the best performances in the Sciences and Business Education, respectively.
Rafena Mustapha of the Saraswati Vidya Niketan Secondary School; was also the proud recipient of an award for her performance in the Humanities.

And of course an award went to Zimeena Rasheed, also of the Anna Regina School, who made Regional history when she undertook 20 subjects at one sitting, and came out being the best performer in Vocational Education.
Manickchand in bragging-rights mode, amplified that “the only things we didn’t get were the short story writing (award), the Best Performer in Visual Arts 2-Dimensional and the best performer Visual Arts 3-Dimensional and we are going for them…We are going to get all eight of these awards before the next five years are over,” added the confident Education Minister.

She further went on to amplify to the House that “from 2006 to 2013, except for 2010, Guyana has brought home, through our children because of the investment we have been making in them, the best overall performer for the Region.”

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