Education Minister Dr Tim Gopeesingh yesterday admitted his ministry exceeded its allocations for the fiscal year and was seeking additional funding to complete certain projects. He said so during yesterday's tour of the Ghandi Vedic School, Aranjuez. He was accompanied by MP for St Joseph, Justice Minister Herbert Volney and Works and Infrastructure Minister Jack Warner.
He said the excess spending was "minimal." The Ministry of Education got the largest allocation in the 2010/11 national budget. He said the Government was committed to assisting students with special needs, of which there were 5,000, in T&T schools. He said those students had learning, visual, hearing, psychological and other disabilities.
He said a pilot programme would be implemented shortly to get the facts and details about the matter.
Gopeesingh said, based on the results of the initiative: "we will be prescriptive in our approach to helping those students at a very early age, from ages three to five, so that by the time they enter primary school, they would have been taken care of already." He said some 200 schools were being renovated during the July/August vacation.