The good news is that schools around the country will be further strengthened by an additional 525 trained teachers. This will augur well for our education system which in the past years, has been growing from strength to strength. It also comes at a time when the Ministry of Education is making Herculean efforts to prepare school children and the youth population with at least the average level of understanding and skills in order to face mainstream society with a high degree of confidence.

Year after year the Cyril Potter College of Education has been churning out hundreds of trained teachers and the 74th graduation exercise on Thursday was no different with 525 teachers coming through the mill, and all Guyana should be happy because our children will benefit from the expertise those trained teachers would have acquired during their stint at the Cyril Potter College of Education.

But, as happened ever so often before, not only in the teaching but other professions also, that the certificates they received at graduation must not be seen as just another piece of paper, but rather as an instrument in which is inscribed a latent sacred pledge to transfer their knowledge towards moulding the nation’s children.

Speaking at the graduation ceremony, Education Minister Shaik Baksh advised graduates that discipline, dedication and quality should be the hallmark of their character, adding that their success really depends on how accountable they are to the nation’s children.

We support the Minister in his appeal to the newly trained teachers to strive for excellence, be good role models and agents of social change, not only to improve their students’ performances, but also to ensure dedicated, civil minded and rounded individuals leave the school system.

We note that at the moment only about 57 percent of the teachers in the system are trained and the Ministry is striving to lift this to about 70 percent in the next five years. This will be great for teachers and our nation’s children.

We need more trained teachers in the schools’ system, especially at a time when the Ministry of Education has declared war against illiteracy mainly among our youth population.

Our newly trained teachers must be mindful of this fact and be ready to take up the new challenges in their efforts to produce excellent products in the children who will be in their care.

With the training these teachers have gone through, it is expected that they will display a high degree of professionalism both in and out of the classroom. They must see the proper education of the children they teach as a debt which could be paid only by using all the guile and tact they might have developed during their training over the years to impart their knowledge to them.

They must, in their everyday undertaking, keep alive the pride of the Cyril Potter College of Education, the majestic educational institution which geared them over the years to return to the school system with added confidence and enthusiasm.

Thousands of teachers have come from the belly of this institution and have over the years been doing a tremendous job working with the nation’s children.

We implore the current crop of trained teachers to emulate them and achieve the type of results that would make them proud teachers.