Educators at the Government Technical Institute (GTI) participated in a five-day training exercise on delivering Competency Based Education (CBE) this week, in keeping with plans to reform the institution from being a technical to a polytechnic facility.

The sessions were facilitated by Jamaican company Dunn, Pierre, Barnett and Associates, through its Chief Principal Technical Director Clover Barnett and Executive Director Paulette Dunn-Pierre, a report from the Government Information Agency (GINA) said.

GTI Chairman Norman McLean, the institution’s Principal Carl Benn, Director of Technical and Vocational Education (TVET) Sidney Walters and the two officials from the human resource development and financial management consultancy and training company formally opened the exercise on Monday morning at the institute’s Woolford Avenue location.

According to GINA, Barnett explained that the session focused on looking at the foundation and the historical development of CBE, trends in TVET internationally and regionally and how they impact on nation building and economic development will follow. Over the next four days, facilitators were expected to look at how to assessing and evaluating CBE delivery. Barnett said that she and Dunn-Pierre would spend some time with the teachers on Wednesday to identify the preparations they need as instructors to be able to deliver CBE. The two were to focus on the environment that the teachers should create that would cultivate students competency at the end of the day.

Wednesday and Thursday’s session examined how technology drives education today and look at Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) for CBE, focusing on the latest trends, the use of cell phone, the use of virtual reality and other technologies to deliver CBE, Barnett said.

“It is a very exciting workshop, and we believe that this particular approach is useful for education and training, not just for GTI, but as an approach that is being encouraged across the region,” Barnett said. “It is five exciting days, and at [the end] of [the] week we are sure the participants would have had a full week, but one that put them a far way in making GTI the institution of choice for Guyana,” she added.

In his address the GTI chairman noted that the training augments the capacity building of the teachers that is critical and that will be addressed as the GTI Board moves to change the institution from a technical to a polytechnic institute. McLean said that a committee chaired by the late Dr. Dale Bisnauth was established to introduce CBE as even before these sessions, GTI had envisioned advancing in this regard.

The committee created a roadmap through which GTI could progress to become a polytechnic institute and established an acronym ‘SAFE’ to focus attention on the critical issues which must be addressed in reaching this goal, Mc Lean said. “SAFE is S-Syllabus; A-Appropriate Training; F-Facility; E-Education Material; T-Training of Staff and Y-You,” he said. In this regard, McLean reminded the staff of how critical they were to the process and commented on the timeliness of the training. “You are the critical factor in this change if it is to be meaningful to do what we want it to do, so I am very happy to have had the opportunity to give you this exposure,” he said. “You cannot discharge our vision of providing quality and relevant training to our young people if we are die hard, chalk and talk … the days for that have really gone. We have to address tools of our trade. The social media has overtaken young people…so we have re-examine how we deliver our message, I hope that today and this week we would see that change in delivery,” McLean said.

In his address, Walters urged the teachers to apply the training techniques learnt during the sessions to the classroom. He also said that the Council was looking forward to the outcome of the sessions.