Education Minister Priya Manickchand has announced that National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA) results will be withheld for students who do not return textbooks that were loaned to them. Results for this year’s examination might be available by the end of October.
She made this disclosure recently while speaking with reporters on the side lines of an event held at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre (ACCC). “The students who got the textbooks in January of this year for Grade Six, if they do not return the textbooks… Then they cannot get their results either online or by the slip until their parents pay for them,” Manickchand said.
This is in keeping with the Ministry’s textbook policy which states, “Learners must return books before Progress Reports/Examination Results/Recommendations/References are uplifted.”
According to her, the Ministry was forced to adopt this policy to ensure that adequate textbooks and similar opportunities are given to the next batch of Grade Six students. She added, “They are returning it so that we could give it to the new students who are coming in, in October.”
Speaking on the Ministry’s textbook policy, she added, “We have to be very clear. That sounds harsh for a person who is struggling, but if you are struggling the least you can do is put up these books because we cannot continue year after year to be investing in the same things.”
Manickchand said that there is a small amount of damage the Ministry caters for while noting that it is a very expensive enterprise to give everybody textbooks. “And so we have to manage it very, very sternly and carefully to make sure it passes down,” she said.
Guyana has not procured textbooks in over three years which has resulted in a “big deficit”, the Education Minister revealed. In light of this, she said that the Ministry is currently in the process of procuring all textbooks needed at the primary level.
