More than 6,000 teachers and thousands of students will benefit from the development of a new mathematics curriculum framework, following the approval of US$13.3 million by the World Bank which will also see a new medical facility being built at the University of Guyana.
These announcements were made on Friday and are in keeping with the organization’s long standing engagement in education in Guyana.
According to a World Bank press release more than 150,000 students and teachers will enjoy improvements in mathematics learning and teaching, respectively, and benefit from an improved medical faculty as a result of a US$13.3 million credit from the International Development Association (IDA) approved by the Board of Executive Directors of the World Bank.
It was stated that among concrete results to be achieved by the project are a new curriculum framework, teaching guides and course outlines for nursery, primary and lower secondary levels; 6,500 teachers trained in the new curriculum; a new building and facilities for the University of Guyana’s Faculty of Health Sciences; and improved standards of the University of Guyana’s medical program in line with the Caribbean Accreditation Authority in Medicine and other Health Professions.
The injection of money into the improvement of mathematics delivery comes after government expressed concern at the poor perforamce of students who sat the math exam at the National Grade Six Assessment.
In October last year government announced that Cabinet as a matter of “extreme urgency and grave national importance” was examining the mathematics results from that year’s Grade Six Assessment Examination which it was perturbed about.
The failure rate was not made public then but subsequently Minister of Finance Winston Jordan disclosed that in Parliament that of the 14,386 students who sat the mathematics component of the exam, only 2,014 of them, or 14% achieved a pass grade.
The government, in its release, had said that the results in mathematics nationwide were unsatisfactory.
“Senior officials from the Ministry of Education and Minister of Education Dr Rupert Roopnaraine were engaged by Cabinet on the declining performance of students in mathematics at this year’s Grade Six assessment,” the release said.
It added that for many years Guyana has “consistently failed to achieve acceptable pass rates” and that the previous approach to this problem has been inadequate.
The release has explained that that year was the first time the Ministry of Education contracted the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) to conduct the examination for the Grade Six students in Guyana. “The basis of assessment used by the Caribbean Examinations Council was radically different from what was used previously by the Ministry of Education. This year there was an increased focus on reasoning and a decreased emphasis on retention,” the release pointed out.
It was noted that the new method of testing as implemented by CXC has exposed “even more the weakness of the previous approach to education adopted by the Ministry of Education in previous years.”
The release added, “Cabinet considers this situation one of national urgency requiring its focused attention and commitment to finding adequate and appropriate solutions in the shortest possible time.”
STEMGuyana in February launched a new software application (app), aimed at improving student performance. The app is being rolled out in four phases and is expected to run for the next 14 months.
Meanwhile in 2015, the University of Guyana Medical School (UGMS) lost the provisional accreditation it had first gained in 2008, after it failed to submit annual progress reports.
At that time, the Caribbean Accreditation Authority for Education in Medicine and other Health Professions, which was in 2003 established under the aegis of Caricom to accredit programmes of medical education, asked the UGMS to prepare for a full site visit in early 2016 if it wished to regain accreditation.
A significant portion of the $108 million approved in supplemental funds for the university was to go toward aiding the Medical School and Health Sciences faculty.
The release from the World Bank stated too that this new project will build on a long engagement in education in Guyana, including two previous and three ongoing projects amounting to about US$62 million.
IDA, it was explained is the World Bank Group’s concessional financing window. This newest project, the release said also builds on UNICEF-Bank collaboration to improve nursery education and will help Guyana meet health education standards of the Pan American Health Organisation in health education. The credit has a final maturity of 25 years, including a grace period of five years, it added.
