Goal 2: Achieve Universal Primary Education
Target 3: Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.
Education is a powerful instrument for reducing poverty and inequality, improving health and social well-being, and laying the groundwork for sustained economic growth. Goal 2 seeks to ensure that all children complete a full course of primary schooling, that is from Grade 1 to Grade 5. Guyana is well on track to meet the target for this MDG. The net enrolment rate was 94 percent in 2002 and the proportion of students reaching Grade 5 increased to 87 percent in 2003.
In terms of gender disparities, national indicators reveal similar rates of boys and girls repeating classes and dropping out. However, when broken down by region, disparities show up between the genders in the interior regions. At the same time, the proportion of students per teacher has been declining and the percentage of trained teachers increasing.
What is being done to achieve universal primary education?
The focus in Guyana is to sustain the record in primary education and to ensure universal secondary education by 2009. There has been progress in access to secondary education which increased from 55 percent in 1991 to 65 percent in 2002.
The key priorities of the Government’s 2003-2007 plan for the education sector are to improve the quality of education delivered and ensure equal access. Equality is to be achieved by paying special attention to students previously unreachable, those without access to quality secondary education, and those in remote hinterland and riverain areas.
Several initiatives have been implemented at the primary level to improve education, such as the distribution of free textbooks, the launch of a new programme for special needs children and the development of literacy and numerical standards.
The special target group of the Government is the hinterland regions where poverty presents serious challenges to education. The Government aim is to bring 40 percent of all hinterland schools up to the national standards by 2007. Interventions include providing school uniforms, building and renovating education infrastructure, school feeding programmes, and incentives and training for teachers. The aim is to bring the percentage of trained teachers in hinterland regions to 50 percent by 2010.
In pursuit of universal secondary education, textbook and examination fees are being provided and/or subsidised, teacher training programmes expanded, scholarships provided to disadvantaged students, Parent Teacher Associations enhanced and secondary schools rehabilitated and extended to reduce overcrowding.
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