Parents call for qualified teachers at Kwakwani Primary

… threaten protests if teachers are not removed

By Utamu Belle

Region 10 (Upper Demerara/Berbice) Vice Chairman Elroy Adolph has made an appeal on behalf of some parents of the Kwakwani Primary School, who are calling for the removal of unqualified teachers to be replaced by qualified ones.                                                                                                                    In delivering his monthly report before the Regional Democratic Council (RDC) statutory meeting last Thursday, the vice chairman related that he had been summoned to a meeting of parents of students of the Kwakwani Primary School, who stated that they are fed up with the way the school is being run.
He reported that so serious are those parents over the issue, that they have threatened to protest if the situation is not remedied by the first week of the new school term.                                                                                  “They’re saying that they have some teachers that were sent to the Berbice River but somehow they stopped at Kwakwani and they were there for almost five years now.
And those teachers failed the CPCE (Cyril Potter College of Education) exams and for the past four years they have been writing the same tests over and over and they (parents) are tired” Adolph related.                                                                                                               According to the vice chairman, the parents are “asking that those teachers be removed and qualified teachers to take their place.

Failing to remove them by the first week when school opens, there will be a protest, stopping them (the teachers) from entering into the compound or (the parents are saying) the children will not be going to school because they cannot have the teachers who are writing one subject for the past four years.
And the sad part about it is that the teachers have to leave Kwakwani to come out at least once or twice a week and (whenever this happens) it means that class would be out of a teacher.”
Adolph went on to state that while the situation is one for the Department of Education, it is also a concern of the RDC, being that the community forms part of Sub-Region 2.
He stated also that parents have expressed dissatisfaction over the last National Grade 6 Assessment (NGSA) results which they blame on the absence of qualified teachers at the school.