Opposition criticised at Education Ministry’s Nat’l Awards Ceremony

Nov 01, 2013 News

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The political opposition came in for a verbal bashing yesterday for its failure to acknowledge Guyana’s outstanding performances at this year’s Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examination.
According to Minister of Education Priya Manickchand, although Guyana copped five of the eight outstanding awards from the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC), the opposition has remained silent.
“It is absolutely disgraceful, shameful…with all we have to celebrate. Eight days ago we announced to this nation that five of our Guyanese sons and daughters topped the Region, the whole Caribbean…other countries are celebrating us and blogging about us and writing editorials about us…so it is absolutely shameful

and disgraceful that not one single leader of the opposition as yet has found it appropriate to congratulate our children,” the Minister asserted.
This is the second time since the announcement of the CXC awards that officials within the Government have sought to highlight the non-acknowledgement of the parliamentary opposition of Guyana’s 2013 CSEC performance.
The Minister, who was at the time delivering brief remarks at the Ministry of Education’s 17th National Award Ceremony for Outstanding Performance held at the National Cultural Centre, emphasised too that the opposition has failed to even recognise the teachers who are often criticised. These teachers, according to the Minister, were in fact instrumental in preparing the students for their outstanding accomplishments.
According to the Minister, the “shameful and disgraceful” occurrence “should never happen and we expect to see this reversed. When our children do well we must celebrate them, when the system needs ‘pulling-up’ we must say that; we are at a place in the Ministry of Education where we are saying congratulations parents, teachers, students”.
She further insisted that the Ministry will continue to do what is necessary to ensure that the outstanding performances are maintained, adding that “you can count on us, because we are not going to get complacent; we will continue to work hard and do even better, but we do recognise we have some weaknesses”.

Guyana was able to not only claim the CXC award for Overall Outstanding Performance, which was claimed by Yogeeta Persaud of the Anna Regina Multilateral School with 18 grade one passes, but also those for the Most Outstanding in Science, Business, Humanities and Technical Vocation. The latter awards were secured by Cecil Cox of Queen’s College with 16 grade one passes; Sasha Woodroffe, also of Queen’s College, with 14 grade one passes; Rafena Mustapha of the Saraswati Vidya Niketan Hindu School with 15 grade one passes, and Zimeena Rasheed of Anna Regina Multilateral School with 18 grade one passes and two grade two passes, respectively.
CXC will present the Most Outstanding awards to the top performers at a ceremony slated to be held at the National Cultural Centre in December.
Of the Most Outstanding CSEC top performers, three were drawn from Junior Secondary Schools – Anna Regina Multilateral and the Saraswati Vidya Niketan Hindu School.
They, along with other top CSEC performers: including Parmeshwarie Seodat of the Saraswati Vidya Niketan and Phillipe Walker, Akeila Wiltshire, Akash Jairam, all of Queen’s College, were among those duly awarded yesterday by the Education Ministry.
Also sharing the outstanding spotlight were the top performers of the 2013 Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE) including: Shalita Appadu of President’s College, Anuradha Dev, Deowattie Narine, Prashat Shivdas, Keleshwar Singh, Benedict Sukra, Melodie Lowe and Jonelle James, all of Queen’s College.

Also receiving awards were National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA) top performers – Salma Majeed, Christian Pile and Navindra Persaud – as were those who excelled at the Carnegie School of Home Economics, the country’s Technical Institutes and the Best Graduating 2010-2013 Student of the Cyril Potter College of Education, Veronica Jeffrey.
The performances of schools at the various levels were also recognised yesterday with Cumberland Primary School being labelled the Most Improved Primary, while Tutorial High was named Most Improved Junior Secondary and St Joseph High, the Most Improved Senior Secondary School.
And of course the award ceremony yesterday was filled with well executed cultural items including a poetry recital by pupils of Success Elementary School, a dance by students of Zeeburg Secondary School and soulful songs from the all-male singing group ‘the Messenger’, all of whom ensured that the audience was kept entertained.
The ceremony was also graced by Prime Minister Samuel Hinds who amplified that Government has been doing a great deal to improve the social sector, particularly as it relates to the delivery of education. His remarks yesterday were premised on the theme, “learn from our best performance, to improve performance across the board and all around.”

 

 

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