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Education Minister Priya Manickchand
As more students display interest in subject areas such as Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) and music, there has been a noticeable lack of qualified personnel to adequately cater for the growing demand of students in these fields.
The Education Ministry on Friday conducted its 2024 end-of-year report to provide the media with insights on the Ministry’s progress over the years. During the Press briefing, Education Minister, Priya Manickchand revealed that while there is no lack of teachers to train students at the Nursery and Primary Levels.
The Minister revealed that at the secondary level, there is a shortage of teachers for subjects such as music and foreign languages among others.
“Well let’s be careful with that. There is a shortage of TVET teachers, Music teachers, PE teachers.”
The Minister added that the need for TVET teachers in particular has skyrocketed over the years.
“TVET is really beating us bad right now because of all we have been doing, we have been engaging more students in doing tech… But we believe we can pick it up. We used to have shortages in Agriculture Science and then that changed we don’t have that anymore.”
Moreover, to date across all levels of education, the Minister noted that the country has some 15,000 teachers in the system. In fact, the Minister highlighted that there has also been an increase in private sector teachers transferring into the public sector due to attractive benefits.
“We now have close to 15,000 teachers. Here’s the other story about that, a lot of private school teachers are asking to come over to the public schools because the conditions are better, the salary is better.”
This, the Ministry of education indicated, is a positive trend, particularly in light of the numerous new schools being constructed countrywide. The Ministry does not anticipate experiencing challenges in filling these schools with educators. In fact, Chief Education Officer (CEO) Saddam Hussain highlighted that on the coast, over 70 per cent of schools are overstaffed.
“Just to point out on the coast alone more than 75 per cent of the schools that we have are currently overstaffed, so the Ministry of education over the past 2 months has had to engage in a significant rationalisation of staffing on the coast.”
Meanwhile, just recently in October Guyana Times had reported that some 1502 pre-service and in-service teachers graduated from the Cyril Potter College of Education (CPCE) which represents the second largest group of teachers to graduate from the institution throughout its 96 years in existence.
Of last year’s graduating batch, 86 per cent were females and 14 per cent were males. Some 447 teachers graduated from Early childhood education, 602 from Primary Education, 169 from Secondary Education, 251 from Secondary Pre-Vocational, and 33 from General Teacher Education (GTE) and Technical Teacher Education (TTE).
CPCE offers a wide variety of courses and programmes for every level of teaching, including early childhood programmes for both pre-service and in-service students, the primary programme, and the secondary academic and pre-vocational programmes. In total, there are four programmes for the Associate Degree in Education (ADE), along with a Trained Teacher Certificate (TTC) Programme for in-service teachers who are not eligible for the ADE Programme. Last year, for the first time in education history, CPCE students received Diplomas and Degrees in Special Education Needs.
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