The St Agnes Primary School was officially commissioned yesterday and Education Minister Priya Manickchand said the main focus was quality output.
To this end, she told pupils, teachers and parents gathered for the ceremony, the Ministry of Education was striving to ensure that every child has textbooks in the areas of “Mathematics, Science, Social Studies and English throughout Grades 1 to 6.” She also plugged the ministry’s previously stated intention to make sure that all pupils are literate by Grade 4.
In addition, Manickchand said, her ministry is working to have an increase from the 74% trained teachers to 82% in the next five years.
Other plans mentioned by the minister, included ensuring that every public school across the country has enough furniture to accommodate every student and that teachers are adequately accommodated as well with chairs and tables and even lockers. This, she said, would be included in next year’s budget and executed so that by the end of the year the ministry should just be “topping up” broken furniture. “We are not at a place where schools are falling down and Guyana should celebrate that,” said the minister during her brief remarks.
St Agnes had for years been squabbling with adjoining secondary school St Rose’s over their shared space. Last year, after a series of protests it was announced that 6 classrooms would be added to St Agnes’ building to alleviate the problems that existed. In October, bids were opened for the work to be done on the school.
The St Agnes Primary can now accommodate 210 children.
