Govt. to build $52M nursery school at Rockstone
Kaieteur News – Ensuring children of Rockstone Village, Region 10 get access to nursery education; the government through the Ministry of Education will be spending $52,180,950 to construct a Grade C nursery school there.
This is according to information released by the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB) which revealed that the contract to build the facility has been awarded to Ele’s Trading & Hardware.
Kaieteur News understands that a Grade C nursery school will cater for 60 to 149 students.
Also for the same region, the NPTAB revealed on its website that a $37,651,350 contract was awarded to Barron’s Exclusive to construct the 58 Mile Primary School. Rockstone and 58 Mile are two communities in the hinterlands of Region 10.
At a recent press conference earlier this year, Minister of Education Priya Manickchand had noted the importance of access to schools for children. At the time she stated that over 30 nursery schools are earmarked for construction this year.
The schools will be built in every region except Region Two.
During that press conference, the minister said that having achieved universal primary education in the country, the intention is to achieve universal nursery and secondary education.
“What does universal mean, it means all over. So all over Guyana we want nursery aged children to be able to access nursery schools and nursery education in Guyana is not compulsory as yet but we have registered the highest enrollment in the Commonwealth Caribbean at more than 85 percent of our nursery age cohort attending nursery school,” she said
The minister added that where there is a gap it would be where there are not enough schools and that is mostly in the hinterland regions.
The Ministry of Education was allocated some $74.4 billion this year from the national budget to build and equip schools among other programmes.
