The Ministry of Education is working to initiate an in-school breakfast programme to benefit children attending public schools throughout the country.
According to a Government Information Agency (GINA) report, Minister of Education, Dr Rupert Roopnaraine, in a recent interview, explained that this programme will make it possible for all children in government schools to receive a nutritious breakfast every school day.
“We are attempting to rollout a complete school feeding programme. This, to us, is very important and we are working hard to ensure that we get breakfast in our schools throughout Guyana,” Roopnaraine said.
The Minister told GINA that the Ministry is currently in discussion with yogurt suppliers. He explained that this is part of the Ministry’s effort to “vary the breakfast, to make them not only nutritious, but attractive to children.”
The Schools’ Breakfast Programme is an expansion of President Granger’s successful ‘Three Bs’ (Boats, Buses and Bicycles) initiative, which is aimed at addressing the critical gap in access to education. These gaps affect school attendance, punctuality and students’ ability to focus after travelling long distances by foot and not eating a proper breakfast, the report stated.
Additionally, Roopnaraine said that transportation remains a big challenge.
“Whether or not we can get more school buses on the road and certainly in some of the far-flung areas along the coast, that remains a challenge; it is on our agenda and we would be working hard to see whether we can get our friends in the private sector to help us with this because it is so hard in their interest that we should be producing who can perform well for them,” he explained.
Constraints
According to the Minister, the ministry’s constraints remain financial. “It is not a lack of will to do these things. We would like to do all these things to ensure that children in the riverain areas can get to school regularly and so on and to ensure that our buses can be provided for children far from school, so all of this is on our agenda, but we are working with some financial and budgetary constraints and do what we can,” he said.
After assessing the plight of Guyanese students and the transportation woes they encounter, government introduced the Three B’s initiative in 2015. A hot meals programme was also expanded to include Precious Gems, Beach View, Hill View and Future Builders Nursery schools in Region Seven.
In addition to the Three B’s plan, another ‘B’ has been included with the provision of books.
This year, government allocated $30M for the acquisition of footwear to be distributed primarily in the hinterland schools. Some 31,500 students are slated to benefit from this programme.
This will complement the $424.2M that has been allocated for the continuation of the school uniform programme that will benefit over 204,000 children attending schools on the coastland and in the hinterland.
