Education Minister rejects claims of lowered standards at CPCE

Education Minister Sonia Parag has debunked claims that the Cyril Potter College of Education (CPCE) is allowing students to graduate without achieving the necessary academic requirements, describing them as false and misleading.

Speaking in response to remarks made by the Guyana Teacher’s Union (GTU) President and APNU Member of Parliament, Coretta McDonald, Minister Parag stated that the claims were aimed at undermining the country’s teacher training programme.

“It’s completely false. And it is ridiculous, actually, because it’s seeking to undermine the CPCE and undermine our teachers who are training and heading into the schools,” Parag contended.

“They have very strict standards, and that is you have to have the academic, the practicum, and the assessment required of you before you can exit that college,” she added.

McDonald alleged that graduates were being passed through the institution without assuming the grades required or meeting the necessary standards required to be graduated. However, Minister Parag highlighted that this is untrue and also unfair to the teachers who are being trained to serve in schools across the country.

She noted that in the past five years, CPCE had revised and updated the curriculum to reflect and provide for modern teaching needs and national education priorities.

“Over the last five years, that curriculum has been revised and updated and is in keeping with relevant areas that need training. Our teachers need to be trained to head out into schools.”

The Minister also highlighted the Government’s investment in teacher training, noting that more than 2000 teachers are trained annually under the current Administration.

She stated, “from 2015 to 2020 – a Government that Ms McDonald now represents and represented for the last five years in Parliament, and is a member of – that Government trained a couple hundred teachers in [those] five years. Over the last five years, this Government has invested in training for teachers, with over 2000 teachers being trained every single year.”

According to Parag, the administration is now focused on upgrading teachers to graduate-level qualifications to further improve education standards nationwide.

She stressed that maintaining high training standards benefits students and strengthens the education system.

“We committed to ensuring that we’ll have 100 per cent trained teachers. And the next move is to have these teachers become graduate teachers. So, the investment in teachers is enormous. but also to the benefit of our children because that’s what we want. We want to have teachers who can be trained and give quality delivery in classrooms. That is what we’re looking at with the curriculum, and I’m sure that we will have another review of the curriculum,” Parag expressed.