Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand is confident that Universal Secondary Education will be a reality by 2025.
Over the past few days, Manickchand visited the construction sites of the St. Rose’s High School and the Yarrowkabra Secondary School which will be a new addition to the Soesdyke-Linden Highway, a release from the Ministry of Education said yesterday.
At this stage, the construction of the Yarrowkabra Secondary should have been 60% completed but the project is currently 65% done, the release said.
The Minister expressed her satisfaction that the school is ahead of schedule which means that if work continues at its current pace, it will be finished by May 2023 as per contract.
She said that the school will accommodate 600 students from Yarrowkabra and neighbouring communities along the Soesdyke-Linden Highway which previously didn’t have access to secondary education.
She said that the new school will complement the already existing Yarrowkabra Nursery and Primary Schools in the community. Manickchand said that the completion of the school will ensure that the Ministry does not have to place children who are exiting Primary School into Primary Tops and in fact would be able to close some primary tops that were opened or re-opened between 2015 and 2020.
Further, she said that the Ministry will be able to cater better for children on the East Bank of Demerara with a new secondary school that is going to be built at Prospect. She said that this school will cater for 1000 students.
The release said that Manickchand also recently visited the construction site for the new St. Rose’s High School which she reported is on schedule with 55% of the work finished.
Both projects went through the tendering process and the contract to construct the St. Rose’s High School was awarded to Shandong Dejian International while the contract for the Yarrowkabra Secondary School was awarded to R. Bassoo and Sons.
Kalitech Inc. is the consultancy firm on the St. Rose’s High School project while Vikab Engineering is on the Yarrowkabra Secondary School project.
According to Manickchand, the education system is now retaining more children in school. She noted that this reality has placed some strain on space within schools.
She said that the rebuilding of the St. Rose’s High School and the North Ruimveldt Secondary School, the construction of the Yarrowkabra Secondary School, the Good Hope Secondary School on the East Coast and the expansion of other schools such as East Ruimveldt Secondary, Queen’s College and the Bishops’ High School will create more space.
“We’re working really hard to achieve universal secondary education within this first term [in office] … So you will see two new schools going up in Region Three, one in Upper Mazaruni (Region Seven), one in Region One, the rebuilding of the North West Secondary School in Region One just to ensure we can bring in universal secondary education just as we were able to achieve universal primary education. So you are going to see Universal Secondary Education before the end of 2025 and we will be very happy to do that”, she said.
The ministry was recently criticised when it was disclosed that children had to be accommodated in tents at several schools.