Minister of Education Priya Manickchand, on Monday declared that teachers, across the board, will be treated the same way. But this will take some work on the part of the Ministry to ensure that this assurance is realised.Moreover, moves to ensure equality among teachers will see the Ministry seeking to revise regulations governing the operation of Special Needs teachers.Currently, Special Needs teachers are not eligible for promotion, a state of affairs that prompted Minister Manickchand to emphasise that “our teachers who have been teaching (Special Needs) have been extremely kind…but at the end of the day,China NFL Jerseys, people want promotion and so on. The system we have now does not allow a teacher teaching in a Special Needs School to be promoted and we are fixing that shortly,” assured the Minister as she addressed a press conference at Cara Lodge,Cheap Jerseys From China, Quamina Street, Georgetown, on Monday.Minister of Education,Cheap NBA Jerseys China, Priya ManickchandShe pointed out that the Ministry is intent on making sure that the teaching of special needs is seen as beneficial to teachers. As such, Manickchand disclosed that “…we are looking at what incentives are offered to teachers to deliver this very difficult programme.”But since there are certainly not enough trained teachers to cater to this crucial area, the Minister said that efforts are being made to have greater focus on specifically training teachers in this regard.At the moment, she said, the sector is furnished with about 75 per cent trained teachers, and this amount is not even sufficient to cater to the entire sector.Manickchand firmly underscored that in 2014, Special Needs Education will receive more intense attention from her Ministry, adding that “we have consulted across the country about what would be needed for our children with special needs to receive quality education that would allow them to be the best adult that they can grow into.”At the moment the Ministry is in the process of compiling a report on Special Needs consultations,Cheap Jerseys China, which will detail not only people’s opinions on the delivery of special needs education but also what must be done,Wholesale Jerseys China, as well as the possible cost and timeline for doing so.“We are absolutely sure that this is a population that we can serve and we truly believe that we will be measured not by how we serve the masses, but how we serve the most vulnerable among us, and because of that, special needs will be receiving extra and more focused attention from the Ministry of Education,” Manickchand stressed.The Special Needs focus comes even as the Education Ministry is looking to soon release its latest five-year Strategic Plan to guide operations. The Ministry’s last five-year plan came to an end as of yesterdayAnd according to Manickchand, the formulating of the new Strategic Plan will see the Ministry seeking to “do a much more detailed review on where we have gotten from 2008 to now, and how much of what we planned to do that has been done…We are in the process now of consulting across the country with the relevant stakeholders to make sure that we have a plan going forward.”It is expected that the Strategic Plan will be in place by the end of this month, and according to the Minister, specific attention will be directed to the quality of education delivered in the hinterland areas. This therefore will mean that “we have to pay particular attention to the resources at the dormitories and resources at the homes that are provided for the teachers who go into the hinterland to deliver education,” said Manickchand.She disclosed that another venture that the Ministry will be embarking on this year is a project aimed at improving the literacy rate among children. And according to the Minister this course of action will require a collaborative effort.“Everybody is going to have to be on board…we are in the process of drafting now what our national plan of action regarding literacy will be and what specific action we need to take and costing those actions that more of our children can be literate…,” informed the Minister.The intent, she insisted, is that in five years’ time, 80 per cent of all children are literate by the time they exit Grade Four.