Proposed school curriculum guides to include GSDS content
DPI, Guyana, Wednesday, September 4, 2019
The Ministry of Education has received a proposed curriculum guide that includes content aimed at aligning teaching to the government’s Green State Development Strategy (GSDS).
The proposed content which was developed by the Ministry of the Presidency’s Department of Energy, was today handed over to the Ministry of Education’s National Centre for Educational Resource Development (NCERD).
NCERD’s Director, Jennifer Cumberbatch receives a proposed curriculum guide from the Department of Energy’s, Alvin Doris.
Led by a Working Group, the modification to the course of study commenced in October of 2018. The group, chaired by Environmental Policy and Education Coordinator, Alvin Doris, looked at disciplines such as Agriculture and Forestry, biodiversity, Climate Change, Land Geology and Geography.
“We reviewed the school’s curriculum guide and we saw that the lack of environmental coverage afforded us the opportunity to propose what could be infused [into the curriculum]” Doris told a simple ceremony at the Herdmanston Lodge.
He stressed that the proposals are not many, as children are already juggling a packed curriculum.
Subjects such as English Language, the Integrated and Agricultural Sciences along with Social Studies were examined for their comprehensive environmental coverage.
It was found that the content of those subject areas had little to no information on the environment. He said this is partly due too, to the curriculum not being revised for several years.
The “proposal for inclusion” in the curriculum will cater to the students in the public and private schools, from grades one through nine.
Accepting the proposed guideline on behalf of the Education Ministry was Director of NCERD, Jennifer Cumberbatch. She said the “suggested inclusions” by the Department of Energy is timely and most welcomed.
She reminded that while the curriculum has not been reviewed for quite some time, there have been a number of changes happening over time.
“NCERD is the home of the curriculum. We are really grateful at this time for the tangible way in which the office for Climate Change has supported us by these suggested inclusions in the curriculum. Here we have something tangible that we can look at to ensure our curriculum is good and includes these kinds of changes,” she said.