Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Fol­low­ing a warn­ing from the Nurs­ing Coun­cil of T&T, the Col­lege of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ap­plied Arts of T&T (COSTAATT) has in­formed stu­dents en­rolled in the Ad­vanced Cer­tifi­cate in Nurs­ing As­sis­tant pro­gramme that they will be dereg­is­tered from the course, which was sched­uled to be­gin on Sep­tem­ber 8, un­til fur­ther no­tice.

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Naseem Koy­lass, Vice Pres­i­dent of Aca­d­e­m­ic Af­fairs at the in­sti­tu­tion, the Nurs­ing Coun­cil ad­vised that the pro­gramme should not com­mence un­til for­mal ap­proval has been grant­ed.

In re­sponse, COSTAATT stat­ed that it re­ceived pro­gramme ap­proval from the Ac­cred­i­ta­tion Coun­cil of T&T (ACTT) on No­vem­ber 25, 2024, and was await­ing for­mal writ­ten ap­proval from the Nurs­ing Coun­cil, de­spite sub­mit­ting all re­quired cur­ricu­lum doc­u­men­ta­tion and sev­er­al re­vised ver­sions since Feb­ru­ary 2024, with the most re­cent sub­mis­sion on June 17, 2025.

“We have since writ­ten to stu­dents who have been ac­cept­ed to the pro­gramme, ad­vis­ing them of the sta­tus. We as­sure all ap­pli­cants that pro­gramme com­mence­ment will not pro­ceed un­til for­mal ap­proval is grant­ed,” Koy­lass said.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that at least 17 stu­dents who reg­is­tered for the cours­es were in­formed yes­ter­day, and ac­cord­ing to COSTAATT, the late com­mu­ni­ca­tion left it with no al­ter­na­tive but to post­pone the start of class­es. The cours­es af­fect­ed are NURS 150: In­tro­duc­tion to Pro­fes­sion­al De­vel­op­ment, NURS 156: Health Pro­mo­tion and Main­te­nance, NURS 115: Nurs­ing Prac­tice, ENAP 105: Com­mu­ni­ca­tion for Nurs­ing As­sis­tants, BI­OL 109: In­tro­duc­tion to Hu­man Anato­my and Phys­i­ol­o­gy, and ENAP 111: Clin­i­cal Practicum.

Con­tact­ed on the is­sue, Nurs­ing Coun­cil of T&T pres­i­dent Corey George said as soon as he be­came aware of the is­sue with the pro­gramme, he ad­vised the col­lege through its pres­i­dent, Dr Kei­th Nurse, that train­ing must not com­mence un­til ap­proval had been grant­ed.

“This puts our pub­lic at risk, since all nurs­ing and mid­wifery per­son­nel must re­ceive train­ing us­ing ap­proved cur­ric­u­la,” George said.

He added, “It was re­port­ed that ap­pli­cants were in­ter­viewed and of­fered let­ters of ac­cep­tance in Ju­ly. They are due to pay reg­is­tra­tion fees and make out-of-pock­et pay­ments for the pro­gramme.”

COSTAATT, which went through the re-ac­cred­i­ta­tion process in Ju­ly, said stu­dents who had al­ready paid fees would be con­tact­ed re­gard­ing re­funds.

“The pro­gramme has not been ad­ver­tised or of­fi­cial­ly launched, nor has in­struc­tion be­gun,” Koy­lass said.

The col­lege ex­plained that with the trans­fer of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s nurs­ing train­ing pro­grammes in 2024, over 70 ap­pli­cants to the Nurs­ing As­sis­tant pro­gramme were redi­rect­ed to COSTAATT by the min­istry.

“Cog­nisant of the ur­gent need for train­ing in this area, COSTAATT de­vel­oped a pro­gramme pro­pos­al that met the col­lege’s cur­ricu­lum stan­dards,” Koy­lass said.

COSTAATT added that fol­low­ing ap­proval from the Ac­cred­i­ta­tion Coun­cil, it be­gan ac­cept­ing new ap­pli­ca­tions for the pro­gramme.

George al­so dis­closed that the coun­cil met with the Min­is­ter of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing, Pro­fes­sor Prakash Per­sad, on Au­gust 5, 2025, where both par­ties agreed to work to­geth­er on nurs­ing and mid­wifery ed­u­ca­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly the de­liv­ery of pro­grammes at COSTAATT and the stan­dard­i­s­a­tion of the cur­ricu­lum.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that an­oth­er meet­ing be­tween the par­ties is ex­pect­ed soon. In May, it was re­vealed that stu­dents from T&T had the worst grades in the re­gion, with a 50 per cent fail­ure rate over­all. George not­ed that all schools of nurs­ing were asked to re­view their cur­ric­u­la and bring them in­to align­ment with the do­mains set by the CXC RENR.

He said then both the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies School of Nurs­ing and the Uni­ver­si­ty of the South­ern Caribbean were in the process of re­view­ing their cur­ric­u­la. How­ev­er, he said there was a chal­lenge with the COSTAATT School of Nurs­ing, which had yet to re­view or sub­mit its cur­ricu­lum to the coun­cil for as­sess­ment.

COSTAATT could not con­firm a time­line for when the course would be­gin, but as­sured all ap­pli­cants and the pub­lic that no stu­dent will be placed at risk by pre­ma­ture pro­gramme de­liv­ery.