Dear Editor,

A widespread problem facing students in our classrooms across Guyana is the absence of teachers to deliver the curriculum. It is a disgrace to have watched a Cabinet outreach programme in Berbice recently and to discover that parents of Belvedere Primary School complained that their children are not being taught. Then what are the teachers being paid for?

Many teachers collect salaries under false pretences! They are robbing our children. Many of them would not like their children who are in schools to suffer the same fate.

The Ministry of Education needs to clamp down on this malpractice and immediately! Numerous contact hours are lost during the time-tabled week due to teachers being absent, late, going to University of Guyana, doing Cyril Potter College of Education homework assignments in school, idling, gossiping, playing games, unnecessary co-curricular activities, or just plain laziness!

Many do not write lesson plans-their major blueprint, so to speak, to enter classrooms to deliver the curriculum; and more write sheer lies in the weekly record of work commonly called journals of what they taught for the past week.

Mind you, this problem is extensive throughout primary and secondary schools in Guyana. This is a very serious matter and deserves urgent attention from all officials in the Ministry of Education.

Teachers must do what they are paid to do, and then complain about low salaries! Teachers, have you done an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay?

You let your conscience be your guide. Stop short-changing the future of our nation.

Yours faithfully,

(name and address supplied)