The sod was turned yesterday at the site of the planned Prospect Secondary School and Education Minister Priya Manickchand said it is expected to deliver quality secondary education to 1,000 students on the East Bank of Demerara.
Speaking at a sod turning ceremony, Manickchand said the new school will serve to eradicate some of the present challenges faced on the East Bank as it relates to providing quality secondary education and she committed the ministry to working to ensure that the leadership of the project is properly handled.
On the latter point, she noted that the school is one of several that were catered for in 2014 under the World Bank-funded Guyana Secondary Education Improvement Project (GSEIP) through which the ministry was working towards achieving universal secondary education here.
Under this project, the secondary schools that are currently under construction at Good Hope on the East Coast of Demerara, Westminster on the West Bank of Demerara, and at Yarrowkabra on the Linden/Soesdyke Highway, were catered for in addition to the Prospect school.
Manickchand lamented that none of the schools had been completed in the intervening time, during which her government was voted out and back into office. She said the delay has affected 3,000 plus students who should have been placed in those schools. Manickchand blamed lack of leadership for the projects being mishandled, incomplete, and even terminated, as was done to the Yarrowkabra School. She assured that this will not be the fate of the Prospect Secondary School.
The minister also noted that presently there are eight Secondary Departments within ‘Primary Top’ schools, while approximately 450 students are being taught in auditoriums in three Secondary Schools in the East Bank Demerara district. She said that her ministry wants to do away with these secondary departments and allow students that are being taught in less-than-desirable conditions to be placed in schools that will allow them to receive a high quality of education.
Manickchand added that the government is committed to ensuring that the project will be completed and will benefit the communities on the East Bank. She also said that while there has been no contractor or consultant appointed to the project yet, she hopes that the entities that will bid to be awarded the contract to construct the school are persons that are patriotic and understand the importance of the school to the 1,000 students it will accommodate. “What I hope and pray is that the people who put forward themselves as having the capacity and the desire to build this school are going to be patriots. [They] will try their very best to finish on time because if they don’t we will terminate long before they reach five years and find out that they can’t complete the school,” she said.
She also warned that if the company awarded the contract to build the school does not honour its contractual obligations, that company will be removed to make way for another that can manage the project. “We will keep a tight hold on the school and the moment you miss, we will be on your backs. For all the time that the school stays unbuilt, we have children crowded at an auditorium trying to get an education. For all the time the schools are unbuilt we have students in a secondary department in a primary school.”
Manickchand also assured that she will work to ensure that the school is completed. “I promise you here today that if I find myself being unable to deliver the promise, then I will remove myself from the space because that would be leadership that does not serve you. So today we commit to you here on the East Bank, as we do to all of Guyana, that any civil works we do, we will monitor it very, very closely. And if the people who are monitoring it are unable to monitor it, they will have to make space for other people who are capable of doing that,” she declared.
Online school
Meanwhile, speaking on the delivery of quality education in the country, Manickchand said that there are three requirements which she intends to meet with the help of the people of the country. The first is a government that cares and is invested to ensure that commodities are available and an understanding of the personal lives of the people in the country. Second, the government must ensure that the people are catered to and trained effectively so they can teach and support the children. “We still have a lot of untrained teachers in the classroom and so very soon, I have great pleasure in saying, very soon, we’re going to be launching off at CPCE (Cyril Potter College of Education) a full online school. We don’t mean teaching on the internet, we mean a full online school, with books and tutoring.” And finally, a family environment that supports learning. Regardless of the parents being separated or other matters, children need to know that their parents support them, and according to the minister, that support builds confidence in students. She added children need to feel prioritised and explained that parents have to ensure their children are prepared for school, ensure they arrive at school, ensure they are given the space to revise and do homework, and allowed access educational programmes.
Permanent Secretary within the Ministry of Education Alfred King, in his remarks, said that while Guyana is moving to provide the educational space and access to quality education, there must be efforts to provide the experiences that will speak to quality. He said that this project will complement similar projects at Good Hope and Westminster. He explained that the school will not only cater for the traditional classroom space, but also offer facilities catering for the Allied Arts where there will be a studio for the performing arts, a science laboratory, a state of the art library and an Information Communication Technology (ICT) laboratory.
Chief Education Officer, Dr Marcel Hutson said the project is evidence of the high premium placed on education by the MoE. He mentioned that the MoE had done the research and was able to decide on having the school constructed in the Prospect community. Dr Hutson also noted that such a project is founded on the pillars of the Sustainable Development Goal Four which are: Access, Quality, Equity and Lifelong Learning.
