Specialist training for 30 teachers, improved maths skills among pupils expected

Thirty primary school teachers drawn from schools across Region Four (Demerara- Mahaica) are benefitting from a four-day training that aims to improve their mathematics knowledge and method of teaching their pupils.

This training, aimed at making the teachers mathematics specialists, is part of efforts led by the Ministry of Education to improve pupils’ skills in Mathematics, according to Guyanese mathematics specialist Vishnu Panday.

“This is the first phase in a series of attempts to empower our teachers with the necessary knowledge and skills in the conceptual framework at the primary level,” Panday said at the training being hosted at the National Centre for Educational Resource Development (NCERD) in Kingston, Georgetown.

He explained that in the first instance, teachers are being trained on numbers and operations which constitutes about 20 per cent of the work done at the primary level.

Once teachers are able to equip themselves with the relevant content knowledge and delivery skills, it is expected that pupils’ skills will be improved too.

Importantly, Panday related that these soon-to-be-specialist teachers will be expected to share the skills they received with other teachers in their schools and catchment areas.

Regina Reid, a teacher at the Plaisance primary school, is one of the 30 teachers benefitting from the training. And she expects that what she learns will be a significant boost for her pupil.

“I will better be able to learn best practices within the classroom so as to help my students understand concepts in the primary mathematics curriculum,” she said.

Already, she learned that children work well through experimenting and taking ownership of their own learning- tools that she will seek to incorporate more in her classroom.

This training is facilitated through the Canada-CARICOM Expert Deployment Mechanism in Guyana which is being funded by the Government of Canada and implemented by the Canadian Executive Services Organisation (CESO).

Canadian High Commissioner to Guyana Mark Berman said that it is part of Canada’s focus on improving the specialised skills in Guyana.

This is particularly crucial for Guyana since the country is at a “significant point in history” and is undergoing a rapid transformation that demands key technical skills, Berman posited.