EDUCATION Minister, Priya Manickchand was warmly and enthusiastically received by residents of Golden Grove, East Coast Demerara when she visited the Golden Grove Primary School on July 3, last to engage parents on the Uniform Assistance Programme and to consult with them on the new Cash Grant Initiative which Government introduced this year.
The Golden Grove Primary School has a pupil population of 749 students, and the Cash Grant Initiative, which will see every child in the public education system receiving an allocation of $10,000, is expected to benefit 188,406 families of students in the nursery, primary, and secondary schools, and will cost a total of $2B.
Minister Manickchand spent hours interacting with residents of the Golden Grove community on a range of issues pertaining to education and education delivery, the availability of text and exercise books, and parental involvement in the lives of their children.
She highlighted the importance of parents’ roles in the education of their children, and appealed to parents to play more active roles in that enterprise, even as she disclosed that Government would continue to support the education of children through various means, such as the uniform assistance programme.
She consulted with parents on what they thought would be the best way to deliver the $10,000 that each child would receive through the Cash Grant Initiative.
Every child attending a Government school is entitled to uniform assistance under the National Uniform Programme. On the coastland, that assistance is administered by the Ministry of Education and given by way of vouchers that are used to make purchases at accredited stores.
In the hinterland, the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs administers the programme, and the assistance takes the form of actually providing fabric, which is then sewn by various women’s groups in the villages.
A complete list of vendors where vouchers are redeemable would be posted at the Regional Education Offices and at every school.
Vendors who have indicated an interest in redeeming vouchers are advised to be ready to so do, and are encouraged to make their prices competitive.
Some 165,000 vouchers will be distributed at public schools in Regions: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, and in Georgetown. Parents, guardians, and secondary school students with National Identification Cards have started uplifting vouchers from July 1.
The Ministry of Education wishes to encourage parents and guardians of children in public schools to take advantage of this opportunity, as it would like every child to be sufficiently outfitted for the new school term, which commences on September 1, 2014. Vouchers must be uplifted before the close of school on July 11, 2014.
Source: (Rebecca Ganesh-Ally and Ravin Singh) https://guyanachronicle.com/2014/07/05/ed-minister-manickchand-discusses-a-range-of-topics-with-parents-of-golden-grove-primary-pupils-ecd