The Caribbean including Guyana has experienced severe learning losses caused by the global coronavirus pandemic, which resulted in the closing of schools for more than a year or two.
Minister of Education Priya Manickchand on Wednesday said the ministry is collaborating with NGOs to ensure students who have dropped out return to schools. She was at the time presenting at a seminar hosted by the World Bank Group on Learning Losses and the Impacts of COVID-19 in Caribbean Education. This programme called ‘Operation Recovery’ was the Ministry of Education’s initiative aimed at encouraging parents and students to return to schools.
Minister Manickchand said, “we are now partnering with NGOs and FBOs to make sure each school has people who can respond quickly because of the capacity of the ministry to respond immediately in bringing kids back into schools.”
NGOs will be placed permanently at various schools and will track down students within five days of going missing from classes.
According to the Education Minister, this will also expand the Ministry’s social service network by bringing back students to schools.
“It’s not always bringing them back into schools, it’s addressing the underlying issue of why you’re leaving in the first place, is it a poverty issue? It is that you have begun to work and your family can no longer afford to live without your income."
At the recently held Grade 6 mock examination, it was revealed that 1000 out of 14,000 students were absent.
