$142M in learning kits for nursery school programme

Mar 01, 2018 News

Deputy Chief Education Officer (Ag) Ingrid Trotman

In order to strengthen the delivery of the Nursery School programme in Guyana, the Ministry of Education will pay a sum of $142M in September, to procure 1500 learning kits for coastland nursery school teachers.
Each learning kit comprises 25 to 30 pieces of items which includes counting blocks, a baker’s set and a doctor’s set. In addition to those items, the kits will also contain packages with different kinds of animals.
“We are exposing them (students) to different animals…we have puzzles and books to go with it,” said Ingrid Trotman, Deputy Chief Education Officer (Ag).
The learning kits are currently being used by teachers in regions 1, 7, 8 and 9 in a pilot project which was started in 2014. Its objective, according to the ministry, is to ensure that teachers are in possession of materials to assist with the learning process.
According to the ministry, prior to 2014, teachers were concerned that they were spending most of their time preparing learning materials for their lessons.
“Instead of spending time preparing materials, we (ministry) provide them (teachers) with materials so that they can spend time fine-tuning the different strategies and methods in teaching the children,” Trotman said.
She said the pilot project provided vital information since some materials were found to be underutilized. She said the underutilized materials will be substituted with local materials generic to specific areas.
“What we have found, out of the 30 different materials in the kit, we looked at how many were being used on a constant basis, and those materials that are popular with the teachers and the children,” she explained.
She said the materials in the learning kits are multi-dimensional and can be used for literacy, numeracy and for other aspects of learning and teaching as well.
Trotman stated that the Education Ministry has seen an improved literacy rate in the schools in which the kits were used since the project started in 2014. For that reason, she said, the initiative will be rolled out to all schools across the country.
At present, the education system has 1,918 nursery school teachers, 332 nursery schools, 15 annexes and 161 nursery classes.

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