Guyana’s children return to full-time in-person schooling, make us proud at CXC

This has been another remarkable week in Guyana. Our country proudly and robustly continues its journey forward, reaching new heights daily. The week started with the announcement that Guyana’s GDP has grown by 36.4 per cent in the first six months of 2022, with its non-oil GDP increasing by more than eight per cent. While the first half of 2022 GDP growth of 36.4 per cent is the highest in the world, the non-oil GDP growth in the first half of 2022 is also among the elite performers in the world. President Irfaan Ali’s PPP Government’s strategy is on track to consolidate a diversified economy. President Ali is succeeding in his quest to ensure Guyana does not make the same mistake as so many other oil-producing countries have done and drag Guyana down a pathway of total dependence on OIL.
Even as this good news is sinking in, there is other good news. The CXC 2022 results are out and it appears that Guyana again might be producing the top CXC performers. The top students from CXC are from various schools in various regions. Our children, whether they are from Anna Regina Multilateral, Queen’s College, Skeldon Line Path, Tagore, Saraswati Vidya Niketan, and so many others, have made us as a country very proud.
Quality universal secondary education in our country is a reality. We must congratulate our children for continuing to improve CXC results. Parents in Guyana must take a bow. We must not forget our teachers. They deserve our gratitude and respect. Guyana is not only likely to top Caricom at the 2022 CXC exams, but Guyanese children might also top CAPE students again this year. Guyanese children being the dominant performers at CXC and CAPE is now almost a ritual.
Continuing the good news this week is that this past Monday represented the first time in almost three years that all our children returned in person to schools across Guyana. Right across Guyana, more than 200,000 children returned to school on Monday. Children and their families and teachers appear excited to be back in school full-time in person.
The Minister of Education has been visiting schools to ensure that there is a seamless return to in-person schooling. In the 2022-2023 school year, it is likely that more students than ever will be getting their school books. This has been a struggle as Government tries to ensure that every student is able to obtain their school books. Billions have been invested to ensure the reduction of schoolbook shortages. This is an issue we often ignore, but this represents a major achievement in our schools.
Among the children that started school on Monday was the President’s and First Lady’s son. The President’s son started preschool on Monday. The President proudly took his son to preschool himself. One activist of the PNC, a lawyer named Wade, decided to find fault with the President. He remarked that the President did not have confidence in the public school system. The President and the First Lady are parents and have the right to decide where their child goes to school. But there is something else – there is no public sector preschool in the country.
Thus, it was never a choice between the public sector and private sector preschools. Demonstrating his utter stupidity, Wade did not even know there is no public sector preschool. This is a good example of why people have little confidence in his lawyering capacity and why the citizens of Guyana have no confidence in the PNC. After all, if this is the kind of leadership the PNC is capable of, then why should any citizen have confidence in the PNC?
Wade’s wasted effort to find fault with the President exposed how desperate the PNC has become. A cursory review of people’s comments revealed how they felt about Wade’s absurd statement. Those who commented included many persons who supported the PNC in the last elections. Their comments roasted Wade for his irresponsible statement. The same bad news arose from the Cuffy 250 conference on what they deemed an “emerging apartheid state”.
They went to Grove on the East Coast of Demerara and the people of Grove ignored them. People wanted to know what Cuffy 250 was talking about and thinking. When the PNC-led APNU/AFC Government were in charge, the best they offered their supporters were selling plantain chips and dog food by the roadside. President Irfaan Ali and the PPP now offer citizens scholarships, jobs, housing, and small business loans to develop real packaging and other kinds of businesses. How could this be an “emerging apartheid state”?
But for those who parrot the PNC narrative of racial bias, consider this: the PPP has been in power continuously since 1992, with the exception of 2015 to 2020. If the PPP was a racial party with a goal of removing Afro-Guyanese from jobs and creating an apartheid state, how come Afro-Guyanese still vastly dominate the public service, the police, and the military? Can Cuffy 250, the PNC ,and the small band of desperate people tell us which single group is deprived when it comes to scholarships, house lots, cash transfer programmes, etc.? Aubrey Norton showed his own unfitness to lead this country when he decided to speak of apartheid in Guyana.
As Guyana’s children return to school this week, as Guyanese celebrate another year of improved CXC results, and as our economy blaze a new path, President Ali is undaunted in pushing the ONE GUYANA agenda.