The children of Mashabo are among the thousands in the hinterland who have been drastically affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Yet despite the many challenges, their teachers are going above and beyond to educate them in the safest and best possible way they know how.
Mashabo is an indigenous community located across a lake just off of the Essequibo Coast, in Region Two. Although the village is not too far from the coast, many areas in the community have no access to cellular network signals or data.
Headmaster (HM) of the Mashabo Primary School, Modiram Beepat, had just finished installing a brand new printer for the school when he sat down with Stabroek News. Beepat was transferred to the school as HM in September of 2017. After thirty years of no passes at the National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA) from the community, Mashabo finally celebrated two passes for A-list secondary schools when the examination was written in 2018. The following year, there were three passes, while this year, two students achieved passes at the exams. Although the passes were recorded after his arrival, the HM credits the parents of the pupils, and his staff, along with former Peace Corps teacher, Grayson Manzi, who was assigned the Science subject, for the successes. As it relates to Science, Beepat pointed out that since Manzi’s arrival, the school has seen the highest number of passes in the subject at the NGSA examinations.