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Saturday, July 26, 2025

3,600 ECCE teachers needed–Gopeesingh

by

20110426

There ought to be no short­age of Ear­ly Child­hood Care and Ed­u­ca­tion (EC­CE) cen­tres, since 70 per cent of the de­vel­op­ment and ma­tu­ri­ty of a child takes place with­in the first sev­en years.So said Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh as he de­liv­ered his fea­ture ad­dress on "ed­u­ca­tion, trans­for­ma­tion and the way for­ward" at the Port-of-Spain Ro­tary Club meet­ing yes­ter­day.The meet­ing was held at Good­will In­dus­tries on Wright­son Road, Port-of- Spain.Gopeesingh iden­ti­fied the im­por­tance his min­istry had placed on the staffing and con­struc­tion of EC­CE cen­tres."There will be a lot of op­por­tu­ni­ties for EC­CE teach­ers be­cause in to­tal we need about 3,600 EC­CE teach­ers," he said.

"This morn­ing at our strate­gic ex­ec­u­tive team meet­ing, we asked for an analy­sis of all those schools which re­quire teach­ers or as­sis­tant teach­ers and to do an as­sess­ment of the pop­u­la­tion who are teach­ers and do not have jobs and to make sure that they come in­to the pro­grammes as ear­ly as pos­si­ble and as we in­crease the amount of schools."Gopeesingh al­lud­ed al­so to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of part­ner­ing with the pri­vate sec­tor and util­is­ing the avail­able space at some "70 per cent of the 200 pri­ma­ry schools" (which he cit­ed as un­der­pop­u­lat­ed) in or­der to "house" some of these EC­CE cen­tres.

"We have done an analy­sis al­ready of close to 200 pri­ma­ry schools that are un­der­pop­u­lat­ed, a re­port is com­ing through on that and we have spo­ken with more than 250 kinder­gartens and nurs­eries so that both pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tor work can com­mence from now on," he said.In re­it­er­at­ing his call to de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools in par­tic­u­lar, Gopeesingh said it was high time that new poli­cies be im­ple­ment­ed in or­der to deal with the "un­ac­cept­able" per­for­mance of those pri­ma­ry school stu­dents who fail to gar­ner 30 per cent at the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am­i­na­tions.


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