The Ministry of Education (MoE) has refuted a statement published in an article in this newspaper yesterday titled “GTU to share ideas with ministry on keeping NGSA students safe” as a “blatant inaccuracy.”
The Ministry registered “its dismay at the blatant inaccuracy contained in that article whose content is attributed to Coretta McDonald, the Guyana Teachers’ Union’s General Secretary, where she is reported to have said the Ministry has not indicated a date for a meeting with the Union.”
On Monday, McDonald related to Stabroek News that a date had not been fixed by the Ministry to discuss the way forward for Grade Six students. This the Ministry said was not true. It said that the Ministry approached the GTU on January 5, 2021 and invited the union to attend a meeting, which the two bodies had agreed to do on the first Thursday of every month. The meeting was supposed to be on January 7. The release says that the Ministry disclosed that there would be a discussion about the NGSA 2021 at the meeting.
The Ministry then went on to say that the Union responded on January 6 and asked that the meeting be postponed to the following Thursday (today), as the union needed the time it asked for to canvass its members’ views on the particular issue. It was emphasised by the Ministry that the assertion that it has not indicated a date for the meeting is therefore not true.
The meeting is set for today at 2pm via Zoom, the release added.
