Over 9000 teachers trained in just over 3 years – Education Minister

In just over 36 months, Guyana’s Ministry of Education has trained more than 9000 teachers, significantly enhancing the quality of education nationwide.
Moving closer to universal education, Education Minister Priya Manickchand announced the milestone during the commissioning of the new Waramuri Secondary School, noting that it reflects the government’s commitment to fulfilling its promise to improve education across the country.
Highlighting the scale of progress, the Minister noted that this number of trained teachers is unprecedented in Guyana’s history.
“In the last three and a half years, we have trained or are training more than 9000 teachers nationwide. To put that into perspective, in any other three-year period in Guyana’s history, we’ve only managed to train about 1500 teachers.
When we took office in 2020, there were just over 7000 teachers in the system. Today, in 2025, there are just under 15,000.
Minister Manickchand also reminded the audience of promises made when the government was in opposition.
“We told you we wanted to increase access across all levels – so that every single child could attend nursery school, primary school, and secondary school and then go on to the University of Guyana for free. We told you we wanted to improve quality by ensuring all your teachers were trained, that more teachers would be trained, and that any young person with the qualifications would have the opportunity to be trained by us.”
She added that the government had also pledged to remove hidden costs in education – such as food, uniforms, textbooks, classroom resources, chalk, cardboard, and even bleach – costs that she said were burdensome for families and have now been eliminated.
“Today, I can say, with great pride and humility, that President Irfaan Ali and the PPPC have fulfilled every single promise – and have even gone beyond them.”
Addressing criticism from the opposition, the Minister said, “Recently, I heard the education shadow Minister for the APNU-AFC – who also happens to be the president of the teachers’ union – saying not to worry about these teachers being trained, because ‘they aren’t ready yet.’ Nowhere else in the world would a president of a teachers’ union fail to celebrate the training of teachers wherever it can be done.”
According to Minister Manickchand, the initiative has significantly boosted the percentage of trained teachers in hinterland and riverine areas, moving from 43 per cent to 86 per cent, with the goal of reaching 100 per cent by 2027.
Regarding the coastland, she said that the government has broken a 15-year stagnation in which trained teacher rates hovered at 63–65 per cent. By 2025, that figure had risen to 98 per cent of teachers either trained or currently in training – a clear indication, she noted, of the “expansion of quality” taking place in Guyana’s education system.
Only in May of 2025, some 1502 pre-service and in-service teachers graduated from the Cyril Potter College of Education (CPCE), which stood out as the second largest group of teachers to graduate from the institution throughout its 96 years in existence.
The 90th graduation exercise was held at the Guyana National Stadium and saw over 1500 educators receiving certificates and awards in several educational disciplines. Of this year’s graduating batch, 86 per cent were females and 14 per cent were males.
Oma Ramdin, Director of the National Centre for Educational Resource Development (NCERD), speaking on behalf of Education Minister Priya Manickchand, urged prospective teachers enrolling in the college’s programme to consider careers in the hinterland.
Noting that more schools are being built in those far-flung communities to serve children living there, Ramdin said the demand for teaching staff in those areas would dramatically increase over the next few years.
As such, in order to encourage more educators to relocate to hinterland communities, the Ministry of Education has developed a three-point promotional strategy which supports and rewards teachers who work in those regions for a minimum of four years.