By: Steven Vickerie. Politics and personal opinion aside, a fair reading of this year’s examination data says that Priya Manickchand has steered the education system through a tough period and produced measurable gains. The 2025 results at both the National Grade Six Assessment and the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate point to real improvements, especially in subjects that have long challenged students.
WHAT THE NUMBERS SAY
Start with the NGSA. In 2025, performance improved in every subject. English reached 69.25 percent, Social Studies 64.77 percent, Science 63.70 percent, and Mathematics 55.51 percent, which officials described as the best across-the-board results Guyana has recorded. That mathematics figure is the highest in the country’s history.
The step up matters because it reflects a reversal of pandemic-era losses. In 2024, only 49 percent of pupils scored at least 50 percent overall. This year, that share rose to 63 percent. That is a large shift in a single year and a strong indicator that the system is recovering.
The data also include markers of excellence. The top NGSA candidate, Tanasha Mayers of Academy of Excellence, scored 487.88 marks, a perfect score by the standardised metric, and earned a place at Queen’s College. That outcome sits within a broader story of more students clearing key thresholds in all four subjects.
At the secondary level, the 2025 CSEC results show an overall pass rate of 66.76 percent. English A climbed to 71.2 percent. Mathematics moved from 27 percent last year to 32 percent this year, which is a five-point rise in a notoriously difficult subject. A total of 12,685 students sat the examinations. These are the types of incremental gains that, sustained over time, lift a system.
WHY THE SYSTEM IS MOVING
Leadership is not just about announcements. It is about diagnosing specific problems and pushing targeted fixes. Three strands of policy under Manickchand’s watch stand out.
1) A national mathematics push. The Ministry rolled out a countrywide Mathematics Intervention Programme beginning in late 2024, with explicit goals to raise the CSEC pass rate and concrete support for teachers and schools. The early 2025 outcomes align with that focus, with mathematics passes rising at CSEC and the NGSA mathematics average crossing the 50 percent mark for the first time on record.
2) Getting children back into classrooms and keeping them there. After the pandemic, the Ministry ran “Operation Recovery” to track down absent pupils, return them to school, and rebuild attendance. By March 2022, more than three-quarters of students who had missed NGSA mock exams were back. That kind of basic attendance work is unglamorous, but it set the stage for the stronger cohort results we see in 2025.
3) Equipping learners and teachers. The government committed to one-to-one provision of core textbooks in the public primary system and began distributing those texts in 2022, with secondary supply following. In parallel, smart classrooms have been installed and expanded across regions to support better lesson delivery and remote instruction capacity. These inputs have been backed by record education financing, with G$175 billion allocated to the sector in Budget 2025.
None of these are silver bullets. Together, though, they help explain why both the “gateway” assessment at Grade Six and the regional CSEC exams are trending upward.
ADDRESSING THE PREDICTABLE CRITIQUES
Critics will say that a 32 percent pass rate in CSEC Mathematics is still too low. They are right that it is not enough, and the Ministry itself has set higher targets. But the correct benchmark for leadership is movement paired with credible plans. A five-point jump in one year is non-trivial in education, and it matches the timeline of the intervention that was launched last September and intensified through this academic year. The NGSA mathematics picture, crossing 50 percent for the first time, reinforces the idea that improvements are not isolated.
Others will claim that these are just headlines. The underlying details suggest otherwise. We see simultaneous gains across English, Social Studies, Science, and Mathematics at the NGSA, and specific subject lifts at CSEC. We also see predictable timelines for results releases, large sittings, and consistency between official ministry data and independent reporting. That coherence is what you expect when a sector is being actively managed.
WHAT DESERVES CREDIT
Manickchand deserves credit for a few specific habits of leadership. Setting clear, public targets for mathematics and sticking with a system-wide plan rather than chasing short-term optics. Focusing on equity basics like attendance and textbooks so that improvements are not limited to a few schools. Investing in infrastructure that supports better teaching, including smart classrooms and professional support. Securing the resources to fund these changes at scale, reflected in the 2025 budget. These choices do not depend on one’s view of the administration. They are the nuts and bolts of how systems improve.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Guyana’s 2025 exam cycle is not perfect, but it is clearly better. NGSA results are the strongest on record across all subjects, with a historic rise in mathematics and a jump in the share of students reaching the 50 percent benchmark. CSEC results show steady overall performance with meaningful gains in English A and a five-point lift in Mathematics. Those outcomes line up with policy choices the Ministry made on math instruction, attendance, textbooks, technology, and funding. Leadership is about owning the hard problems and improving the numbers that matter. On this year’s evidence, Manickchand has done that, and the country’s students are better off for it.
