Putting to rest concerns that Guyana may be losing its teachers to the US and countries in the Caribbean, Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand today assured that there is no mass migration of Guyanese teachers.

At a press conference this morning, Minister Manickchand said less than one hundred non-graduate teachers resigned in 2024, and a much smaller number of graduate- teachers tendered their resignations.

“We also had less than a hundred non-graduate teachers resigning last year, which is not anything different from what we have seen every year. So, we don’t have as a record any mass movement of teachers. Every year teachers retire; every year teachers resign, sometimes for their own thing, and every year, unfortunately, teachers die. And, we are not seeing any rise in those numbers,” she explained.

According to Minister Manickchand, the records suggest that teachers, who would have migrated in the past are now returning to Guyana because the conditions are simply better here. She added that even private school teachers are now transitioning to public schools.

“A lot of private school teachers are asking to come over to public schools because the conditions are better, the salary is better. Of course, the security of tenure is much, much better because it is very hard to knock off a teacher,” Minister Manickchand said.

Adding his voice to the issue, the Chief Education Officer, Saddam Hussain, said in some schools there are more teachers than required.

“On the coast, more than 75% of the schools that we have are currently over staffed. So, the Ministry of Education over the last two months have had to engage in a significant rationalization of staffing on the coast,” the Chief Education Officer explained.

It was explained, however, that there is a shortage of teachers for some subject areas, such as Technical Drawing, Music, Foreign Language, and Physical Education.

At present there are close to 15,000 teachers in the Public Education System.

Over the last four years, the Ministry of Education through the Cyril Potter College of Education, has trained more than 4,300 teachers, according to the Education Officials.

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