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President launches first educational channel

Apr 02, 2011 News

— Warns that no politics allowed

History was made in Guyana yesterday when the Government of Guyana, through the Ministry of Education, launched the first ever educational channel dubbed the Educational Television Broadcasting Service (ETBS).
The channel marks the first for Guyana and perhaps even in the Caribbean and will be aired on channel 29, cable 80.
President Bharrat Jagdeo officially launched the channel at a simple ceremony held at the National Centre for Educational Resource Development.  He regarded ETBS, “the learning channel for Guyana” and asserted that “we need one channel, at least one channel with a break from politics in this country and this one will be it.”
“There will be absolutely no politics on this channel, none whatsoever. You are not going to hear about the PPP or PNC or any other group, this is all about educating our people across the country.”
The President revealed that just under US$1M was expended to bring the channel into being which according to him is far less than the sum of money directed to infrastructure in the education sector.  He commended Minister of Education, Shaik Baksh, and his team of “really hardworking professionals” who in the past six months gave momentum to the idea and brought it to fruition.
This move, he said, will undoubtedly complement what is already being done in the education sector which is characterised by the massive re-orientation of resources in very difficult circumstances.
According to the President there was a large fiscal deficit and there were many other competing needs within the education sector which were in fact created by the prevailing philosophy “that I think we all subscribe to” that education is vital to the transformation of the country.
He observed that education is in fact one of the means “to get people out of poverty and into productive activities and help them achieve their ambitions in life.”
In lauding the public education system, the President pointed out that there are excellent teachers, good administrators and there have been “unbelievable” progress where 35 percent of children had access to secondary education about two years ago to now close to 100 percent access and plans apace to ensure that all have access.
“We have seen the number of passes grow and the successes at the exams but it would be incorrect for me to say that all is well and that we are totally satisfied with our achievement in the education sector.”
“We have demonstrated the political commitment as reflected in the growth in resources to the sector, we have achieved some success in the sector but we still feel we are not achieving the results that we can achieve.”
He pointed out that oftentimes this does not come down to money thus there is need for assessments to ascertain what are the plausible ways to change the existing situation.  He further pointed out that while strategic development plans all have their place they however mean very little when initiatives do not support them, even as he recognised that there are problems with quality from nursery to university levels that must be addressed.

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