Latest update September 23rd, 2026 10:06 AM
Strategic plan needed to retain teachers – GYSM
The need for a strategic plan to retain trained teachers was amplified yesterday when the youth arm of the People’s National Congress Reform, the Guyana Youth and Student Movement (GYSM), held a press conference at its party’s Sophia, Georgetown, headquarters.
GYSM Secretary, Adel Lily, said that there is a glaring, as well as crucial need to not only increase the proportion of experienced teachers in vital areas, but to ensure that they remain faithful educators to Guyana.
GYSM’s Adel Lily
According to him, efforts to merely “increase the numbers being trained will only increase the supply to the Bahamas and further afield. Without an education system capable of generating the quality and quantity of skilled persons which Guyana needs we will be less and less competitive in the regional and world economies.”
It was against this background, he said, that the GYSM was forced to place its concerns on the record about an apparent lack of direction and focus of the government on the issues facing the education sector.
Lily pointed to the fact that the sector is not merely a social sector which exists to foster educational upliftment but rather is also intended to serve as a crucial avenue to help with Guyana’s economic recovery.
“We must reiterate the party’s view that without a credible and quality education system, the incentive will increase for more and more of our skilled professionals to leave in an effort to safeguard the future of their children,” Lily observed yesterday.
He added that Central Government is yet to formulate a plan to retain trained teachers even as he stressed that “it is unacceptable that the government should allow the system to continue to decay without any response.”
According to the GYSM member it is important that the welfare of teachers and the interests of students be a high priority for any administration and an essential foundation for national development and progress. Moreover, he added that the absence of such measures has resulted in the growing scourge of illiteracy.
Even with focus on the theme under which the Ministry celebrated Education Month last year “Child Friendly Home, Child Friendly Classroom and Quality Education”, Lily said that there is a shortage of trained and experienced teachers in vital subject areas.
He also made reference to the fact that there remains an absence of any clear and viable plan to cope with the situation. This year the Ministry observed education month using another slogan that speaks to the need for skilled teachers.
Pointing to the infrastructural state of some public education institutions, Lily vocalised the urgency for the Minister of Education herself (Priya Manickchand) to pay attention to ongoing works across the country.
According to him, the GYSM is optimistic that the Donald Ramotar Administration will seek to examine the ways and means by which the conditions of “our teachers can be improved and the education system bettered throughout the entire country in physical and human terms.”
A change in the system can only be realised, Lily said, if serious attention is directed to the deficiencies of the system and immediate measures taken to correct them.
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