CPCE ramps up Spanish teacher training to boost student fluency

…new curriculum in the works for primary levels

The Education Ministry is advancing its phased implementation of Spanish as a mandatory subject in schools across Guyana, with renewed efforts underway to train more teachers to support this initiative. According to Chief Education Officer (CEO) Saddam Hussain, the programme is steadily gaining traction at the secondary level and is being expanded to include primary schools.
Speaking during a brief telephone interview with this publication/Evening News, Hussain reaffirmed that Spanish is already being taught in nearly all secondary schools from Form One, with some institutions offering Portuguese as an alternative in lower forms. He explained that by Forms Four and Five, Spanish is typically taught within selected streams.

“One is that we have something called a five priorities programme and one component of that programme is that each secondary school student should do Spanish. That’s in terms of secondary. We also issued a circular to all schools advising them that once there is a teacher available, Spanish should be done”.
“We are currently framing the curriculum. We are designing a curriculum that would be offered in the primary school. At the moment, there are some primary schools where Spanish is done, but we’re designing a kind of a curriculum to allow for students to do Spanish from grades one all the way to grade five or six,” Hussain explained.
According to Hussain, a key challenge, however, remains the availability of qualified teachers—especially at the primary level, where educators are not typically trained to specialise in foreign languages. To address this, the Cyril Potter College of Education (CPCE) has begun offering Spanish specialisations at various levels, and teachers are also being encouraged to pursue additional training opportunities through platforms such as Coursera.
“The college actually offers specialisation in Spanish at the different levels and there is other training through Coursera and a host of other programmes where teachers can specialise in Spanish. Quite recently, a couple of days ago, the Ministry had a thing on its website providing another opportunity for teachers to be trained in Spanish,” the CEO added.
The push to mainstream Spanish in Guyana’s education system began in 2023, with the Education Ministry outlining the programme as a strategic move to align with Guyana’s geographical and economic realities.
“Students are expected to be able to converse in Spanish, not just learn it from a textbook,” Hussain emphasised.
As the initiative progresses, the Ministry is closely monitoring student participation at the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) level. While final numbers for 2025 are not yet confirmed, recent years have shown a steady increase in the number of students opting to write Spanish at the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) level.