…as Guyana observes Int’l Literacy Day The underlying reasons for the underachievement at the Grade Three and Grade Six Assessments are currently engaging the attention of the Ministry of Education. This is according to Minister of Education, Dr Rupert Roopnaraine, who in a message to mark the observance of International Literacy Day, today, said that the assessments can be considered as the education system’s indicator of literacy amongst the primary school population.“The emphasis is now on quality, on the assumption that universal access has been attained.?Guyana has indeed declared the achievement of universal access to primary education, but the success rates at the Grade Three and Grade Six examinations still indicate that literacy is a daunting challenge,” the Minister confessed.According to him, in light of the fact that much has been said about the need for improvement at the level of the management and the delivery of education, those areas have already been identified for attention.Minister of Education,Cheap NBA Jerseys, Dr. Rupert RoopnaraineHowever, he noted that the challenge in the identified areas is the implementation of the solutions and the evaluation of the implementation in an effort to determine the effectiveness of the solutions or the need for new approaches.The Minister said that there may also be external contributory factors to the observed poor performances. “These factors may well include the home and community environment, inclusive of the value being attached to education; the nutritional state of the children, hence their absorptive capacity; their very enrollment, punctuality and attendance at school,Cheap NBA Jerseys China, which may be influenced by financial circumstances; and myriad of other external factors.”He pointed to the President’s School Boat/Transportation project as one such recognition. There is need for much more research and inquiry into the causal factors in relation to the rate of literacy that is extant in the country’s schools.But the school population is not the only affected population, added Dr Roopnaraine. He disclosed that there is a large post school or dropout population that may also be affected. As such he underscored that the research and inquiry must also be extended to that sphere and programmes formulated to provide solutions.According to him, given the apparent universal nature of the problem and its magnitude, a national, inter-sectoral and inter-agency approach is required.The school system, he declared, has to ensure that the problem is not perpetuated,Wholesale NFL Jerseys, while the entire nation has to be equally engaged outside of the school system, be it civil society, employers and community initiatives.“All are involved, lest we all be consumed.?On this the occasion of International Literacy Day , the entire Nation and its constituent parts are respectively encouraged to take stock and to take ownership of what must be a national endeavour if Guyana is to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),Wholesale Jerseys US, but more importantly sustainable development,” stressed the Education Minister.It is now 50 years since the United Nations declared?September 8?as the day of observance of International Literacy Day. That, that declaration was made 50 years ago and has been occasioned by 49 unbroken years of annual observances, speaks to the importance that the world community has attached to literacy and the apparent ongoing need for it to be highlighted as a global challenge and a challenge to developing countries, in particular, said Minister Roopnaraine.He added that this challenge, and the requisite action to address it,http://www.theworldsoccersshop.com/Belgium-Mousa-Dembele-Jersey.html, was highlighted under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as a Target: Universal Primary Education with the ratio of achievement of literacy between the ’15 to 24 age group’, as an indicator.“That the successor to the MDGs, the SDGs, will also highlight this issue clearly indicates that it is still one of the global challenges and impediments to the optimization of the available human resources in the development process,” noted the Minister.? This is in as much as it also underlines the level of development attained in keeping with the Human Development Index as the tool for the measurement of human development.The SDGs essays as one of its sub-goals: “the percentage of children who achieve minimum proficiency standards in reading and mathematics at the end of (i) primary (ii) lower secondary”. This, according to the Minister, undoubtedly builds on the access to primary education which was a goal of the MDGs.Minister Roopnar