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Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Bumpy start to new school term

by

20140106

Sev­er­al schools across the coun­try re­mained closed yes­ter­day but there was a dis­pute be­tween the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and the teacher's union as to the num­ber.Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh iden­ti­fied four schools, in­clud­ing Mal­ick Sec­ondary School, which will re-open on Jan­u­ary 13, St Do­minic's (Savio) RC, Barataria Boys' RC, sched­uled to be opened this morn­ing and to­mor­row and Low­er Cu­mu­to Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry, for which no date has been giv­en for re-open­ing.How­ev­er, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) dis­put­ed the min­istry's claim, say­ing the fig­ure is much high­er. TTUTA's pres­i­dent De­vanand Sinanan said the min­istry did not do what it was sup­posed to do dur­ing the Christ­mas va­ca­tion, hence the rea­son for the con­tin­u­ing clo­sure of so many schools.

The sit­u­a­tion has ex­tend­ed the va­ca­tion time for hun­dreds of stu­dents across Trinidad and even in To­ba­go where all in­fants and Stan­dard One stu­dents were told to stay at home for an­oth­er week. This is to fa­cil­i­tate a pri­ma­ry cur­ricu­lum train­ing ses­sion for pri­ma­ry teach­ers and prin­ci­pals.In a re­lease, the min­istry stat­ed: "The re-open­ing of schools for the sec­ond term of the aca­d­e­m­ic year 2013-2014 has been a suc­cess, as 99.7 per cent of schools opened their doors to re­ceive the na­tion's chil­dren."The min­istry at­trib­uted that to "the hard work of school su­per­vi­sors, min­istry of­fi­cials, prin­ci­pals and mem­bers of the Ed­u­ca­tion Fa­cil­i­ty Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (EF­CL)."

The min­istry, through EF­CL, is re­spon­si­ble for the re­pairs and main­te­nance of 476 Gov­ern­ment and Gov­ern­ment-As­sist­ed Pri­ma­ry Schools, 134 Gov­ern­ment and Gov­ern­ment As­sist­ed Sec­ondary Schools and 193 Ear­ly Child­hood Cen­tre for Ed­u­ca­tion Cen­tres in Trinidad.The min­istry said it was com­mit­ted to en­sure the com­fort and safe­ty of all stu­dents, teach­ers and staff and point­ed out that mi­nor school re­pairs and main­te­nance would con­tin­ue to be car­ried out af­ter school hours and dur­ing the week­end to avoid dis­rup­tion of class­es

.

Open un­der sub-stan­dard con­di­tions

Sinanan, on the oth­er hand, called on Gopeesingh to demon­strate his com­mit­ment by do­ing what was need­ed to be done. He iden­ti­fied a list of schools which re­mained closed and oth­ers which opened its doors but con­tin­ued to op­er­ate un­der sub-stan­dard con­di­tions.Sinanan said while stu­dents and teach­ers re­port­ed for school, in one in­stance at Princes Town East Sec­ondary, the en­trance to the com­pound was blocked be­cause of un­fin­ished work be­ing un­der­tak­en by the con­trac­tor. The school pop­u­la­tion had to wend their way to the school.The union's first vice pres­i­dent Lyns­ley Doo­d­hai added that af­ter mak­ing their way to the school build­ing, stu­dents and teach­ers dis­cov­ered the air-con­di­tion unit was not func­tion­ing. Doo­d­hai said each class­room, which has as many as 37 stu­dents, is built in such a way that it could on­ly be oc­cu­pied if the air-con­di­tion­ing was work­ing.He said school was not dis­missed but the teach­ers re­tired to the staffroom where there was a func­tion­ing unit.

He said TTUTA mem­bers have al­so in­formed the union there was a pres­ence of mould in the build­ing and the union would soon be writ­ing to the min­istry on that is­sue.Sim­i­lar­ly, he said, while stu­dents and teach­ers re­port­ed for school at the North Man­zanil­la Pri­ma­ry, class­es had to be sus­pend­ed be­cause of prob­lems with the in­fra­struc­ture.He added that class­es were al­so af­fect­ed at Low­er Cu­mu­to Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry, which was sched­uled for oc­cu­pa­tion on Mon­day. He said union mem­bers had al­ready packed up their be­long­ings last term to move in­to the new build­ing but met locked doors on the first day of the term.The min­istry said every ef­fort was made to ac­com­mo­date stu­dents and teach­ers of the Low­er Cu­mu­to but heavy rains over the week­end in­un­dat­ed the sew­er sys­tem, forc­ing the ear­ly dis­missal of class­es.Doo­d­hai al­so point­ed to the clo­sure of St Do­minic's (Savio) RC and Mal­ick Sec­ondary but the min­istry's state­ment said St Do­minic's is sched­uled to be opened this morn­ing.

With re­spect to Mal­ick Sec­ondary, where dry-ice blast­ing was still be­ing un­der­tak­en by Cen­tu­ry 21 to get rid of mould from three of five class­rooms, stu­dents would have to spend an­oth­er week at home.The min­istry as­sured the school was sched­uled to be re-opened on Jan­u­ary 13 to fa­cil­i­tate ma­jor works be­ing un­der­tak­en by EF­CL.Doo­d­hai point­ed out that school was al­so dis­missed short­ly af­ter the com­mence­ment of class­es at the St Mary's Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry, due to an on­go­ing sew­er prob­lem from the term be­fore."Noth­ing was done over the va­ca­tion."


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