Visually-impaired students across Georgetown will now have access to education which is specifically designed for them with the opening of the Ministry of Education’s Visually Impaired Resource Unit.

At the opening ceremony yesterday, Principal Education Officer Baydewan Rambarran said that its presence is yet “another step in the continuum of [our] mandate to provide education, especially special education for our nation’s children.” He added that the establishment of the unit was just a “small part of an overall vision” and he revealed that the ministry hopes to establish more locations across the country which caters to children with disabilities.

The unit, which was officially opened yesterday by Minister of Education Priya Manickchand, is located at 144 Albert Street, Alberttown. It has, however, been functioning for quite some time and has been catering to students who would have transferred from the David Rose Special School. The special needs programme was first established with the opening of the David Rose school in the 70s and it has helped those with disabilities acquire an education.

Speaking to students of the unit and members involved in the project at the ceremony, Rambarran said that the unit will enable the visually impaired students to “achieve a higher level of proficiency and self-sufficiency.” According to Chairperson Evelyn Hamilton, like the students from the Guyana Society for the Blind, these students will also have access to computers equipped with the programme JAWS (Job Access With Speech), which is an interactive learning programme designed to aid visually impaired computer users. Hamilton also said that the students of the unit will be catered to individually by teachers specially trained to facilitate their education. For students with limited use of their vision, learning materials will be available in large print and for those who are blind, learning materials will be available in braille or in audio versions.

Veteran journalist Julie Lewis, who spoke at the commissioning ceremony, is a product of the education system geared towards those who are visually impaired. In her brief talk, Lewis said that she hoped to inspire all the children of the unit and hoped that they will be encouraged to make their best of their situation. Lewis, who is visually impaired, was among the first blind students to graduate from the David Rose School. She said that she was also the first totally blind person in Guyana to write A-levels and the first blind person to obtain a degree from the University of Guyana. She believes that her achievements as an individual are proof that being visually impaired does not mean that one cannot be successful in life.

Meanwhile, in her address, Minister Manickchand emphasised that the time to cater to the minority is now, as a nation is only as strong as its weakest link. “Education is the surest way of changing circumstances,” she said. “It is the surest way of changing the human condition for the better.” She further proclaimed that “it would be a dereliction of duty if we did not look at the areas that were unseen.”

Manickchand also stated that under the present government, the entire education sector has drastically improved.

According to her, when the present government came into power, it found “a broken country, dilapidated education system and buildings in a state of disrepair.” She also asserted that the sector has grown and overcome those odds as the school systems are functioning well enough for the ministry to undertake the development of a special needs school. She noted that once there were only 30% trained teachers and now the amount of trained teachers surpasses 70%.

Source: https://www.stabroeknews.com/2014/news/guyana/05/08/ministry-resource-unit-tailor-education-visually-impaired-students/

– as Manickchand commissions Resource Unit for Visually Impaired

THE Ministry of Education is in the process of developing a five-year strategic work plan aimed at delivering better special needs education service to the nation’s children.A great part of this strategic plan which is soon to be released will see numerous programmes, initiatives and new arrangements being put in place to ensure better inclusion within the education sector for children with special disabilities.

This was announced by Education Minister Priya Manickchand on Wednesday as she commissioned the Resource Unit for the Visually Impaired.

Manickchand told the gathering that the ministry has a report that will determine what will be the plan of action and the way forward for the ministry over the next five years. She added that her ministry is in the process of publishing a document to that effect.
A critical part of the document, she said, is the volume two aspect of the plan which will give details and spell out exactly how the ministry hopes to go about implementing the various programmes and initiatives of the work plan over the five-year period.
Among the areas to be addressed in the plan, focusing directly on children with special needs and their education, are the creation of a database which will guide the ministry on the number of disabled children and where they are located.

She said that this is very important since it will guide the ministry on the number of children they need to cater for and where the various centres and programmes need to be established.
Without the database, the ministry could end up in a situation where services are being rolled out in an area where it is presumed that these children are located or have access to, but the facts may tell a different story.
The five-year plan will also focus on literacy, early childhood education, technology and the sciences. She said that every single aspect of educating children will be addressed in the strategic plan and this came about following a series of consultations.

Meanwhile, the rolling out of the programmes will not be restricted to central points but every single region, the minister added. She said that systems will be put in place to ensure that the regions are involved in the process since this will make it easy for everyone to follow what’s happening.

DAVID ROSE SPECIAL NEEDS SCHOOL
The five-year work plan starts from this year and already on the cards is the purchasing of a bus for the David Rose Special Needs School, something they have long required.
Minister Manickchand also told the gathering on Wednesday that the ministry would be looking to revamp its management to ensure there is better oversight of programmes and integration of the disabled.

SPECIAL NEEDS DEPARTMENT
Moreover, there is also a plan by the ministry to establish a special department in the Education Ministry to deal with the issue of special needs children and their schooling. Also planned is a system to allow for the screening of children at nursery and first-year levels to ascertain if they have any signs or forms of disability. This, however, has to be done in conjunction with the Ministry of Health, it was reported.

‘CHILD-FIND’ SURVEY
The Education Ministry will also be doing its own ‘child-find’ survey to determine how many disabled children are not attending school and the reasons for this. The issue of access to education and opportunities are also on the cards in the ministry’s five-year plan.
The overall goal of the Ministry of Education in the five-year plan has a lot to do with the formation of policy guidelines to ensure that persons with disabilities receive a high quality of education services.
In the meantime, basic work and life skills will not be left off the cards and according to Minister Manickchand, the ministry understands the need to have the children receive skills to carry them through life, even if they cannot effectively cope with academics.
In the quest to have better educational access and inclusion of persons with disabilities, the Ministry of Education has also taken note of the persons who have to work with the students in the integration process.
Minister Manickchand observed that one of the hardest tasks in the five-year plan may be the issue of conducting training needs assessments for teachers in the Special Needs School System and the mapping out of career paths, while ensuring their development.
This aspect will be done for those in the mainstream programmes of special education, while there will be standards adopted to assess the performance of special needs children. In addition, a curriculum guide to embrace students with disabilities will be developed.

Source: (By Leroy Smith ) http://guyanachronicle.com/2014/05/08/five-year-education-work-plan-aims-to-improve-special-needs-education

EDUCATION Minister Priya Manickchand has disclosed that more students are now enrolling in the sciences for the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate exams (commonly called CXC) which has started and will continue until June.

The Education Minister said she expects Guyana to achieve greater success than before.
In an invited comment, Minister Manickchand said “our students have been enrolling in more subjects and still continue to do better in these subjects than ever before.”
She also noted that “we should as a country celebrate the fact that good CXC results are not being centralised in Georgetown but schools across the country have recently been shining also. This has been the Government’s vision for the education system in our country and it was able to achieve this significant milestone and growth in this sector because of specific and calculated strategic and very conscious investments being made in this sector.”
Manickchand acknowledged, however, that like the rest of the world “we have challenges we face – for example, ‘how do we achieve better results in Mathematics and in English. How do we get more students interested in the science subjects?’ Our team is at present working tirelessly to eradicate these challenges.”
The CSEC examinations are usually taken by students after five years of secondary school, and mark the end of standard secondary education. The CSEC exams are equivalent to the Ordinary Level (‘O’Level) examinations and are targeted at students sixteen years and older. The CSEC examinations are often called the CXC examinations as they were the only examinations offered by the CXC from 1979 until 1998.

Guyana, last year, again etched its name comfortably into the annals of history having attained five of the eight Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC)’s awards available to candidates who performed exceptionally Region-wide at the 2013 sitting of the CSEC Examination.

Source: Written By Rebecca Ganesh-Ally https://guyanachronicle.com/2014/05/07/more-students-now-enrolling-in-sciences-for-csec-exams-according-to-education-minister

AS we celebrate workers of all classes in our society today, we at the Ministry of Education salute and celebrate our hard working and dedicated teachers and administrative staff who work ardently every day to shape the young minds and the future of Guyana. 

There are no set of words that can amply describe the importance of teachers in any society. The teaching profession is regarded worldwide as the mother of all professions, since it provides the foundation for learning in an individual, upon which all greater academic achievement rests.

Teachers continue to benefit in numerous ways through the partnerships and agreements established by the Ministry of Education in collaboration with the Guyana Teachers Union, as together we strive to improve the working conditions of our teachers. Through the shrewd leadership of the GTU and its strategic engagements with the Ministry, along with the commitment of the PPP/C Government, teachers today enjoy the best benefits ever made available to them in the history of Guyana. While there is always room for improvement in all conditions of life, our teachers are being paid the most they have ever been paid in 20 years, and enjoy more benefits than ever before.In other words, teachers are the crucial guardians of intellectual life in any society. The Government of Guyana recognizes this, and has always placed great value on our teachers. And we have matched that value with real actions within the last two decades, which have significantly improved the quality of life for our teachers.

Today more teachers are being trained in Guyana than two decades ago. And very soon we will create history in Guyana when we elevate the teaching profession to its rightful place among the other recognized professions in Guyana, with the introduction of the Professional Standards for Teacher Education.

We look forward to the continued support of the Guyana Teachers Union as we work together to better the working conditions of our teachers. The Ministry of Education remains committed to improving the quality of teacher education in Guyana, and ultimately, the quality of teachers we place in the education system. Education is one of our nation’s biggest industries, and we, as a government, will continue to invest in it so that we can raise better generations of Guyanese citizens.

As we reflect on the importance of Labour Day, let us remember the past from which we came, and work assiduously to affect positively the future we will enjoy. Today we celebrate our hard working teachers in a profession that continues to improve through the unremitting commitment of a caring Government.
Let us continue the progress we have made so far in this most noble profession, and work in solidarity to build on that progress to make the teaching profession better.

May God bless our teachers and our nation.

Priya Manickchand,
Minister of Education

As we celebrate workers of all classes in our society today, we at the Ministry of Education salute and celebrate our hard working and dedicated teachers and administrative staff who work ardently everyday to shape the young minds and the future of Guyana. There are no set of words that can amply describe the importance of teachers in any society. The teaching profession is regarded worldwide as the mother of all professions, since it provides the foundation for learning in an individual, upon which all greater academic achievement rests. In other words teachers are the crucial guardians of intellectual life in any society. The Government of Guyana recognizes this, and has always placed great value on our teachers. And we have matched that value with real actions within the last two decades, which has significantly improved the quality of life for our teachers.

Teachers continue to benefit in numerous ways through the partnerships and agreements established by the Ministry of Education in collaboration the Guyana Teachers Union, as together we strive to improve the working conditions of our teachers. Through the shrewd leadership of the GTU and its strategic engagements with the Ministry, along with the commitment of the PPP/C Government, teachers today enjoy the best benefits ever made available to them in the history of Guyana. While there is always room for improvement in all conditions of life, our teachers are being paid the most they have ever been paid in 20 years and enjoy more benefit than ever before. Today more teachers are being trained in Guyana than two decades ago. And very soon we will create history in Guyana when we elevate the teaching profession to its rightful place among the other recognized professions in Guyana, with the introduction of the Professional Standards for Teacher Education.

We look forward to the continued support of the Guyana Teachers Union as we work together to better the working conditions of our teachers. The Ministry of Education remains committed to improving the quality of teacher education in Guyana and ultimately the quality of teachers we place in the education system. Education is one of our nation’s biggest industries, and we as a government will continue to invest in it so that we can raise better generations of Guyanese citizens.

As we reflect on the importance of Labor Day, let us remember the past from which we came, and work assiduously to affect positively the future we will enjoy. Today we celebrate our hard working teachers in a profession that continues to improve through the unremitting commitment of a caring Government. Let us continue the progress we have made so far in this most noble profession, and work in solidarity to build on that progress to make the teaching profession better.

May God bless our teachers and our nation.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/notes/ministry-of-education-guyana/labor-day-message-from-the-honorable-minister-of-education-ms-priya-manickchand/674954722568030/

The more than 100 students  from across the country, who attended the final league of the Annual Science, Mathematics and Technology Fair, held in Region Two (Pomeroon/Supenaam) on Wednesday were reassured by Education Minister, Priya Manickchand, that Guyana’s education system is poised to “take off”. However, Manickchand warned that in order for Guyana to maintain success, it would take a collective effort by all Educational entities and moreso those of the opposition parties to continue to relish in the current successes.
“Look at where we are, what are some of our challenges and be confrontational in addressing those issues.”

Manickchand further promised both students and teachers that her Ministry will work hard, diligently in order to improve the system where improvement is necessary. The Education Minister confessed that while her Ministry will not always get it right, her support would remain relentless.
Speaking on the annual Science Fair, Manickchand said that the science, Mathematics and Technology fair was the most expanded. It allowed students to be prepared for the future.
Manickchand reminded that Guyana’s children have performed excellently in the Science subjects. They have acquired the reputation of their successful performances throughout the Caribbean.
Manickchand added that her Ministry intends to expand IBSE in 20 Primary Schools and the lower grades (1-3) in ten schools.

The use of Science to teach language in ten Schools as well as the establishment of two Science centers and the expansion of Microscience pilot into sixty additional Secondary Schools are all plans for 2014.
Additionally, Manickchand said the establishment of two science centers would be realised.
The Minister reiterated the inclusion of ICT and the expansion of teacher training. She spoke of infusing E-learning in ten Secondary Schools where access to resources is limited.

Manickchand said that her Ministry also hopes to partner with Belize and St. Lucia, and UNESCO to expand the Microscience experiments projects for all of the CXC territories within the Caribbean. Chief Judge, Lois Oliver, said that she was impressed with the quality and caliber of the projects.
Oliver said that Guyana is in safe hands and is willing to embrace the challenges of the evolving society. She said all of the projects are implementable.
The Science, Mathematics and Technology fair was held under the theme “Providing solution for the 21st Century.

Source: (Yannason Duncan) https://www.kaieteurnewsonline.com/2014/04/24/guyana-earns-regional-reputation-in-sciences/

Come September, the country’s public nursery schools are expected to see an increased influx of children. In fact, based on information emanating from the Ministry of Education, close to 3,000 children, some of whom had never been in the formal education structure, are slated to be plugged into the system when the new school year starts.

However, there are some worrying trends detected among this very young population which may only be resolved through an intensified partnership between Ministry officials and parents. Speaking of this development in the National Assembly during the recent Budget debate, Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand, said that based on a research conducted among some 700 children poised for entry at the nursery level, there is need for much more collaborative work to be done.

She disclosed that while some of the targeted children were enrolled in Day Care “we found that some of the things that children should know at three (years) six (months)…that only 32 per cent of our children knew.”
According to the Minister it was found that the majority of children assessed were unable to identify basic shapes and numbers, could not recognise and recite their ABCs, were unable to count and weren’t au fait with basic biographical information about themselves such as their names, address and age.
Moreover, the evidently concerned Minister amplified the need for the daunting development to be addressed forthwith, even as she insisted that “for us it is a bit worrying.”
“We believe that with partnership, if we could get parents to do the supportive work at home, we can better prepare our children,” conjectured the Minister.

The Ministry earlier this year announced a revised nursery entry age of children whereby they will from September be able to access school even if they would have turned three in June. Previously a child had to be three years old by March 31 in order to enter Nursery School in September of the same year.
Manickchand therefore acknowledged the role of the Education Ministry to inform parents, in a mass way, “what it is their children need to know and to tell them how it is that they can use their natural environment; not just buying charts and gadgets but your natural environment will teach the things that children need to learn.”

In using the environment as a teaching aid, Manickchand alluded to the stimulation of children’s colour awareness by enlightening them, for instance, to the fact that “the grass is green and the sky is blue; we don’t have to buy a chart for that; bring the red bucket; (tell them) here is mommy’s orange dress…”
Although arousing such awareness is undoubtedly the role of the education system, the Minister emphasised the need for parents to lend support in helping to plot the way forward.  “Even if you can’t read, even if you can’t write, I know (there are) parents (who) spend their lives trying to make their children’s lives better; good parents do that,” Manickchand passionately amplified.

With the anticipated support from parents, Manickchand is confident that the Ministry with its approved $32.3 billion allocation will be able to ensure more enabling education environments for the nation’s children.
Working together with the Ministry of Local Government, she disclosed that the Education Ministry will be seeking to ensure that schools are provided with adequate furniture, among other things, to properly accommodate the young population. Added to this, the Minister disclosed that her Ministry has been able to write its own nursery readers which it will now be able to produce with the approval of its budgetary allocation. “The Budget is going to allow us to print them and give to every single child in nursery (school), so that they can be better prepared,” assured the Education Minister.

Source: https://www.kaieteurnewsonline.com/2014/04/24/pre-nursery-school-children-oblivious-to-basic-information-manickchand/

MINISTER of Education Ms. Priya Manickchand yesterday, at Anna Regina Secondary School on the Essequibo Coast, declared open the National Science, Mathematics and Technology Fair 2014.

Theme for the event was ‘Science, Mathematics and Technology: providing solutions for the 21st Century.’

At the opening ceremony, there was representation of the 10 Administrative Regions of Guyana and the Minister said it was the biggest science fair to date.
“We are in a better place than we have ever been in the education system in our country today. Guyana’s education system is at a place in our country’s history where we are poised for takeoff. We can achieve this significant milestone and growth in this sector because of specific and calculated strategic and very conscious investments being made in this sector,” Minister Manickchand said.
She stated further that Guyana has achieved universal primary education and the Education Ministry is currently working to achieve universal secondary education across the country.
“If we are to measure, tangibly, what the Government has done for this sector, in 1992, five percent of the National Budget was spent on education and, in 2013, we utilised 15.9 percent of the National budget. This is the Government’s commitment to see Guyana do better,” she posited.

BETTER COMPENSATIONS
Manickchand also related that “we now have over 70 percent trained teachers within the Education sector and the sector is currently discussing better compensations for the teachers but this cannot be done overnight.”
Assistant Director of the Caribbean Science Foundation (Barbados) and Chief Judge at the Science Fair 2014, Ms. Lois Oliver expressed gratitude to the Ministry for affording her the opportunity to take part in this year’s event and told the parents and students that “being a nerd is cool; because of nerds we have advanced technologically today.”
She also advised the parents to encourage their children in whatever ideas they have concocted and assist them in making it a reality.
The Guyana Chronicle, after the opening, spoke with some of the students about what were exhibited and they treated visitors to informative sessions on their respective projects and the aims.
Some students were delighted at being part of the fair, as they believe that it provides a challenge to their young minds and helps them to increase their knowledge base to become great thinkers and better students.
The exhibits will be judged on presentation, creativity, students’ response to questions and relevance to the development of the environment, originality and economic and environmental benefits to the country.

Source: By Rebecca Ganesh-Ally; http://guyanachronicle.com/2014/04/23/manickchand-opens-biggest-science-fair-to-date-on-the-essequibo-coast

 

With a keen intent on getting value for money, the Ministry of Education has put in place a strategic policy which is designed to garner community support in the quest to achieve value for money.
This notion was recently amplified by Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand, as she addressed the National Assembly during the recent budget debate.

According to Manickchand, the strategic move is one which will see Ministry officials venturing into communities in which there are plans to undertake education infrastructural work.
“Every time we are going to expand infrastructure, build new schools, we are going to go out, take all our documents with us and have community meetings with all those who will come. Particularly, we would invite parent-teacher associations (PTAs), staff, parents, students, the Regional Democratic Councils (RDCs), the Neighbourhood Democratic Councils (NDCs) and we will leave with them documents so that they can keep a close eye on what is happening in schools so that we can have quality work,” said the Education Minister.
This move, she said, is seen as important in light of the fact that the Ministry has, in the past, been the beneficiary of works that are less than desirable.

“We recognise that sometimes we get shoddy work…That does not mean that all contractors give us shoddy work but we have been robbed; the country has been robbed a couple of times and we want to make sure that when we do things we get value for money,” asserted Manickchand.
The Ministry is also working towards forging greater collaboration with its stakeholders through the introduction of a website. And according to the Minister there are plans apace to launch the website shortly which will be interactive and offer all visitors education documents, policies, textbooks and even past exam papers.
“It is going to have a feature that will allow children to answer exam papers and then we send them an email with what results they got – what was right and what was wrong,” disclosed the Minister.

This feature, according to her, will cater to children at the levels of Grades One through Six and students from secondary schools will eventually be included too.
Already the Ministry has in place a Live Chat internet forum, which stakeholders could access at www.education.gov.gy every Thursday between the hours of 19:30 hours and 21:00 hours, to interact with the Minister herself or senior officials about issues of concern.
The introduction of the forum was premised on the recognition that there were a number of concerns within the education system, some of which were not gaining the attention of the relevant officials within Central Ministry in a timely manner.

With the introduction of this avenue it is expected that information will reach senior officials at a much faster rate than was obtained in the past.
It is therefore expected that such interactions will lend to the education sector operating even more efficiently.
Stakeholders could interact with the officials via the Ministry’s Facebook page. “These are all things that we have done to make sure that we can hear from the people we serve, so that we can serve them better. These are things that we have done to make sure that we can get our messages out, get our information out there,” said the Minister.
She added that the Ministry has been on a continued focused mission to ‘fine-tune’ its partnership with parents and other stakeholders since according to her, “we are absolutely sure that students in our care will not have as much and be as much as they can be except there is parental or home involvement.”

The Minister was at pains to highlight that “all the children who have done well we can trace it back to a few things, a good school system, sound investment in the education sector and involvement of their families and not necessarily wealth families…”

Source:https://www.kaieteurnewsonline.com/2014/04/22/strategic-tactic-in-place-to-guard-against-shoddy-work-education-minister/

THE Ministry of Education will be hosting its National Science, Mathematics and Technology Fair 2014 under the theme ‘Science, Mathematics and Technology: Providing Solutions for the 21st century’. This is the final of several such regional events.

According to an advisory from the Ministry of Education, over 100 science projects will be on display from schools across the country.

We would like to encourage the public to support our students as they demonstrate the use of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics to solve local school and community problems. Some of the features of the 2014 National Science Fair include an educational movie corner, awareness workshops on Mangroves, Climate Change, Microscience experiments and Interactive Mathematics.

The National Science, Mathematics and Technology Fair 2014 will be held at the Anna Regina Multilateral School – Region 2 from tomorrow April 23, 2014 to Thursday, April 25, 2014 from 10:00 – 15:00 hrs.

The Minister of Education, Hon. Priya Manickchand and ministry officials are expected to be in attendance at the Opening Ceremony, which is scheduled for 10:00 hrs tomorrow.