Government intends to plug $60.7B into education sector

Feb 13, 2021 News

A classroom of students (Photo: Ministry of Education)

Kaieteur News – The government intends to plug $60.7 billion into the education sector this year, according to the Senior Minister in the Office of the President with the responsibility for Finance, Ashni Singh, who made the announcement while delivering the 2021 Budget in the National Assembly yesterday.
“Mr. Speaker, the state of the public education system inherited by our administration leaves much to be desired,” Singh lamented.
He said that the sector is plagued by inadequate supervision and lack of accountability within all levels, which needs to be reversed immediately.
A sum of $5.2 billion has been allocated for construction, rehabilitation and maintenance of educational facilities across the country. Under the allocation, the construction of two secondary schools in Region Six and Region Nine will commence, works on a secondary school at Prospect to address the growing demands on the East Bank of Demerara will also be done and the Abram Zuil Secondary School will be reconstructed to provide the necessary facilities for learners on the Essequibo Coast.
Further, $884 million has been allocated to equip and retool technical and vocational training centres. ”Mr. Speaker, as the economy evolves, the education sector must be positioned to respond to the demands of the labour market,” Singh said. His administration will aggressively intensify its efforts to increase enrolment in technical, vocational education and training institutions as it works to promote non-traditional forms of learning and life-long learning, hence the allocation.
An allocation has also been made for the refashioning of the University of Guyana, in response to the need for modernizing. A total of $3.3 billion has been earmarked to finance the operations of the university’s two campuses.
“Government’s collaboration with Commonwealth of Learning and Coursera has already allowed us to offer more than 4,000 free online courses from various universities around the world to our people and 64,605 citizens are benefitting from online courses offered by these two entities of which to date, 8,481 participants are teachers, who have since registered/participated in at least one course,” Singh also said.
A sum of $1 billion has since been budgeted to support online scholarships to be granted in 2021.