THE Guyana Government has signed a contract with Ontario-based consultancy firm Dunn, Pierre Barnett and Company Canada Ltd to conduct a national skills audit for the ministries of education and labour.

The contract, which is scheduled to commence in early January 2024, will run for six months and is expected to provide data on the South American and Caricom country’s current workforce as well as an analysis of skills gaps and any potential migrant labour needs.

Dr Justine C Pierre, labour market, technical and vocational education and training (TVET) and migration consultant (Canada and Grenada), is leading the audit team. He is being assisted by Dr Philomenia Harrison, statistician, economist, and retired head of statistics for Caricom; Guyanese economist Dr Mark Bynoe; Caricom and Caribbean Association of National Training Authorities TVET expert Dr Paulette Dunn-Pierre; as well as Dr Eddison Doyle, quality assurance and chartered accountant.

“These kinds of surveys are the formation of planning and developing a country,” Dr Pierre is reported as telling The Caribbean Camera newspaper in Canada.

He also emphasised the importance of the study, telling the newspaper that it is crucial to Guyana’s transformation agenda as one of the the fastest-growing world economies.

The audit comes after Guyana, in October 2023, announced a “significant” new oil discovery in the Essequibo region and said it had awarded bids to eight companies, foreign and local, to drill for crude.

Eight years before that, American multinational oil and gas corporation ExxonMobil had announced the discovery of oil in the Essequibo, adding to Guyana’s reserves of at least 10 billion barrels and resulting in the country now having the world’s largest crude reserves per capita.

Given the oil boom, the national skills audit will arm the Government with data — gathered through field and desk research — that will help it shore up its human development strategies.

The researchers will collate data from in-depth consultations and interviews with private sector representatives, State officials, civil society groups, and scholars.

The audit team will focus on expanding access to quality education at the secondary level as well as improving technical and vocational training to meet the needs of the labour market.

Funding for the audit is being sourced from a World Bank loan under the Guyana Strengthening Human Capital Through Education Project, signed in 2022, which will benefit approximately 60,744 students and 2,128 teachers and principals at the secondary level.

Additionally, at least 600 students and 140 secondary and post-secondary TVET trainers will benefit from professional development activities.

The Guyana Government has also said that the education project is designed to support the piloting and national roll-out of a new curriculum for grades seven to nine, which emphasises environmental stewardship and climate change integrated into social studies and science for those grades.

At the same time, the project will finance textbooks for grades seven to 11 to support the roll-out of the new curriculum and the urgent need for learning recovery following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Increased support for teachers and principals is also envisioned under the project. This includes training teachers on the new curriculum as well as how to teach students with different needs, including students with disabilities. Other interventions include the coaching and mentoring of teachers to support continuous professional development, and the development and implementation of an instructional leadership and managerial programme for principals.

In light of the learning losses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, project activities will include establishing an early warning system to help teachers and principals identify and support students at risk of dropping out. General secondary schools will also be built or rehabilitated to improve the learning environment for students as well as the infrastructure, climate resilience and access to education for all students.

The project will also support technical and vocational training which will include transferable skills to equip students for a changing labour force, including digital competency skills. Additionally, it is aimed at strengthening the enabling environment for TVET and improving the quality and relevance of training options.

Dunn, Pierre Barnett and Company has, for years, been providing consultancy services in the Caribbean Community. It has lent expertise to St Lucia, St Kitts and Nevis, Suriname, Jamaica, Antigua and Barbuda, and St Vincent and the Grenadines. In 2019 the firm was commissioned by Guyana’s Ministry of Education to craft a training programme tailored for master trainers within the TVET system.