Minister of Education Shaik Baksh says his ministry, through the Cyril Potter College of Education’s (CPCE’s) Distance Education Secondary Academic Certificate Programme at the college’s campus, will upgrade teachers via distance education delivery.

Shaik Baksh

Baksh who was addressing the launching ceremony of the programme on Wednesday, said further that his vision is to see five years from now CPCE being incorporated within UG with one holistic faculty of Education, the Government Information Agency (GINA) reported.

Forty-two percent of the teachers today are trained through the Guyana Basic Education Teacher Training Project (GBET) which was funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and originally conceived as a five-year project but which is now in its 10th year.

The project was extended to allow for the development of the Distance Education (DE) Secondary Certificate Programme and is tailored to suit hinterland communities.

GBET, GINA said, pioneered the projects of education programmes and their main focus was on the hinterland areas since the ministry grants incentives to persuade teachers who are willing to go into these areas to render their services.

Baksh stated that the toshaos from the areas are requesting that more teachers be sent to the remote areas and the ministry has sought to take on volunteer teachers as long as they have some qualifications.

Upon completion of this stint, the ministry will cater for the training of these volunteer teachers and have them issued with teaching certificates when they have completed the training courses.

According to the education minister, GINA added, currently there is a joint team working at the University of Guyana (UG) that will report to him at the end of August as it relates to the education faculty and programmes being offered there.
By 2010, CPCE will be offering an Associate Degree to its trained teachers.

Through the DE Foundation Programme, 349 teacher trainees have successfully upgraded to the status required whereby they can now pursue the CPCE certificate programme. And through the DE Early Childhood and Primary Certificate Pro-gramme, approximately 970 teachers have, over the four implementation years to date, successfully completed programmes with all of them being trained, GINA concluded.