With World Bank funding amounting to US$1.7 million, the Ministry of Education was able to implement a strategic project in September 2015 which has started to bear fruits.
The project – the Guyana Early Childhood Education Project [GECEP] – has essentially proven that with improved teaching resources, training and monitoring, the performance of children at the early childhood stage can be improved.
Making reference to this was GECEP Project Coordinator, Ms. Quenita Walrond-Lewis as she addressed those gathered at a closing ceremony of the project held at the Umana Yana.
Walrond-Lewis said that the objective of the project was to improve emergent literacy and numeracy outcomes for children at the nursery level and primary grade one level in the hinterland and targeted remote riverine areas.
Following the implementation of the project, the results showed that the performance of the targeted children improved significantly in the areas of literacy and numeracy. They were brought on par with their counterparts on the coastland who were not exposed to the project.
She said that the project during its three-year period would have impacted 8,585 lives inclusive of educators, children, parents and primary caregivers.
Additionally, 526 nursery and Grade one teachers have benefited from improved teaching resources and training, and over 200 primary caregivers and their families in Regions One and Seven have benefitted from education tailored for them.
According to Walrond-Lewis too, the project contained four main components which were capacity building, improved supply of teaching and learning materials, primary caregivers and fourthly, project implementation support, administration, monitoring and evaluation.
The components, she explained, would have been executed through two phases, the first which focused on literacy, the second on numeracy while the third phase focused on both literacy and numeracy and how to reach learners in a meaningful and impactful way.
She said that teachers were trained at the sub-regional level whereby they were provided with toolkits which contained learning materials to improve the quality of learning and education delivery at the early childhood level. In fact, since the hinterland and remote riverine areas were targeted, the kits were tailored to suit the cultural and geographic uniqueness of the communities.
According to Walrond Lewis, coming out of the project are 41 Master Trainers and 526 Early Childhood Education coach educators.
Touching on the issue of quality education for all was Minister of Education, Ms. Nicolette Henry, who said that “achieving quality educational programming for all our nation’s children brings Guyana in line with the core directives of the United Nations’ [UN] Sustainable Development Goal [SDG] number four.” This UN SDG speaks to the fact that education is a fundamental human right and is indispensable for the achievement of sustainable development.
