By Antonio Dey | HGP Nightly News|
GEORGETOWN, GUYANA – Member of Parliament and veteran trade unionist, Coretta McDonald, has leveled a searing critique against the Ministry of Education, pointing to a massive, systemic collapse in student retention as children progress through the public school system.
Speaking at a press conference on May 15, 2026, McDonald unveiled startling statistical discrepancies that suggest more than half of the country’s primary school graduates vanish from the classroom before sitting their final secondary school leaving examinations.
The Missing Millions: A 50% Attrition Rate
McDonald exposed a troubling numbers gap within national education metrics, tracking a single cohort’s massive decline from the primary level to the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) stage.
“Out of over 15,000 students who sit the National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA), only 7,000 to 8,000 actually continue on to pursue and write their CSEC exams,” McDonald revealed.
The MP highlighted that this early exit trend is accelerating rapidly, with a critical mass of vulnerable students abandoning their classrooms by Grade Nine (Forms 2 and 3).
Socio-Economic Pressures Fueling the Exodus
Rather than a lack of academic interest, McDonald firmly rooted the dropout epidemic in the harsh economic realities currently gripping working-class Guyanese households. She argued that skyrocketing costs of living force young learners to sacrifice their education to seek premature employment and supplement their family’s income.
The MP mapped out the primary drivers behind the crisis:
- The Cost-of-Living Crisis: Stagnant wages failing to keep pace with household inflation.
- Failing Support Structures: The unique economic burdens placed on single mothers surviving on low wages.
- Absentee Fathers: A lack of dual-income stability in vulnerable communities.
McDonald also noted that these financial anxieties are compounding across the wider domestic labor market. She connected the domestic household strain directly to growing frustrations among local blue-collar workers who are increasingly protesting unfair competition from foreign labor influxes.
“Ribbon-Cutting Over Resolution”
The opposition MP castigated the Ministry of Education’s leadership, accusing them of prioritizing PR-friendly infrastructure projects over the messy, structural work of human development.
“These are critical concerns that the Ministry of Education should be focusing on, rather than simply cutting ribbons at new school openings,” McDonald charged. She argued that constructing state-of-the-art school buildings yields little return if the government fails to create the social safety nets required to keep children inside them.
Superficial Fixes for Deep-Rooted Issues
Turning her attention to institutional culture, McDonald also slammed the state’s handling of systemic school bullying, which she notes remains rampant despite heavily publicized government campaigns.
She questioned the financial allocations of the education budget, arguing that while massive sums are continuously funneled into headline-grabbing initiatives like the national school breakfast program, the state is ignoring the underlying psychological and socio-economic pathologies plaguing the student population.
“Week in and week out, we are calling for emergency meetings to discuss bullying in our schools,” she stated. “Yet we see money thrown at programs with very little targeted intervention addressing the root causes of these serious problems.”
McDonald concluded with a direct demand for an immediate, data-driven national intervention policy. She warned that if the Ministry continues to substitute substantive social support with ceremonial gestures, Guyana risks cultivating a lost generation priced out of their own country’s economic boom.
