Access to textbooks critical for students

Some 22,000 students in Region Six are to benefit from more than $90 million in school vouchers. Distribution of these vouchers have commenced countrywide.
These vouchers are expected to complement the ongoing distribution of education related materials. A fair and equal opportunity to access education is that Minister Priya Manickchand assured region six residents. At the time she was launching that leg of the voucher distribution.

Among those materials needed are textbooks for subjects done at both primary and secondary levels. These have been deemed critical for students, “we have one difficultly but we are sorting that out, and that is different schools across the country use different textbooks so we want to make sure we fix that,” Minister Manickchand explained.

Minister Manckchand acknowledged that while teachers still have the freedom to determine their teaching materials, ministry officials are consulting with teachers to determine what exactly are their needs. The Minister said that based on a general consensus from that consultation, once all the teachers agree on which are the best books to use, the ministry will then review the number of books in the system and the materials needed, “we know that textbooks are very expensive now and what we are trying to do as a Ministry is to ease that burden on parents having to buy them,” Manickchand assured.

Schools generally remain closed due to the public health measures to combat the COVID 19 pandemic. Just a a few weeks ago, students of grades 10 and 11 returned to the classroom to prepare for CSEC examinations.