VP addresses key concerns in education, training systems in Guyana
-during Virtual Diaspora Conference
Vice President, Hon. Dr. Bharrat Jadgeo says while there is need for curricula reform to make the education system more globally competitive, the Government is providing 20,000 online scholarships so citizens can qualify themselves and upgrade their skills sets.
The Vice President made this statement during the Government’s Inaugural Virtual Diaspora Conference, which was hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation on Saturday.
Dr. Jagdeo acknowledged that not only must the Government change its curricular, but the areas in which persons are being trained. He made this point in response to queries made by some participants about modernising Guyana’s education system.
“Education would require curricular reform, but also a new method for delivering education, particularly due to the pandemic. Those skill types don’t often exist here. But we are buying those skill types to bolster online means of reaching our population.”
The Vice President shared that Government wants to ramp up university training in Guyana. To achieve this goal, he noted that this is why it is offering the 20,000 online scholarships over five years. He also encouraged Guyanese to take advantage of the plethora of programmes, which are offered though six international universities.
VP Jagdeo also spoke of initiatives that cater for early school leavers, and those who have not acquired tertiary education.
To this end, he explained, “There are several categories of those persons. For example, we have someone completing school and having two CXC subjects. It is required that you have five subjects to move onto the university or to gain employment.
A lot of those people do not want to go into manual labour, so we are opening up a number of service-type opportunities like the call centre, and we are incentivising those.”
Dr. Jagdeo was quick to note that Guyana possesses one of the “best tax regimes in the world” for ICT-related jobs. He also highlighted that the Government is proposing ten-year tax holidays for companies that invest in the ICT sector.
“The Government has even built the shells for many of these entities. We even co-sponsored the training of young people there,” he said.
With regard to the concerns about persons who left the school system early, the Vice President said the Government has already developed an Apprenticeship Programme. This programme seeks to have school dropouts trained by businesses with technical vocational skills.
“Now, that programme has grown enormously. We have put quite a lot of money under the Board of Industrial Training,” he said.
This programme has already expanded across Guyana.