Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Al­though Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said on the week­end that things are in place for Venezue­lan mi­grant chil­dren to join class­es at pub­lic schools come Sep­tem­ber, ma­jor ed­u­ca­tion stake­hold­ers say they are still in the dark about the process, as the min­istry has yet to con­sult with them.

At least 80 mi­grant chil­dren have been as­sessed by the Catholic Ed­u­ca­tion Board of Man­age­ment (CEBM) on Eng­lish lan­guage pro­fi­cien­cy for place­ment in­to pri­ma­ry schools when the aca­d­e­m­ic year kicks off next week.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, CEBM CEO Sharon Man­groo said the stu­dents were as­sessed us­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ in­stru­ment. She said the as­sess­ments are ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue over the com­ing days and weeks.

“Ini­tial­ly, we were ex­pect­ing 15 chil­dren but think that there would be more turn­ing up as peo­ple be­come aware that this is nec­es­sary,” she said yes­ter­day.

Man­groo said the CEBM has al­ready iden­ti­fied 17 schools in out­ly­ing ar­eas that have va­can­cies to ac­cept the stu­dents.

“The schools that have the spaces are not the schools in the built-up ar­eas. So, we talk­ing (about) schools like Caratal. I sus­pect some peo­ple don’t even know where Caratal is,” she said.

She said oth­er school boards are will­ing to ac­cept stu­dents once “the con­di­tions are clear and there is the ap­proval from (the Min­istry of) Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. How­ev­er, while this may be true, these boards com­plain that they are yet to be con­sult­ed by the min­istry”.

On Sat­ur­day, Gads­by-Dol­ly said arrange­ments are in place to wel­come lo­cal and mi­grant chil­dren in­to pub­lic schools when class­es re­sume in Sep­tem­ber.

How­ev­er, Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS), Vi­jay Ma­haraj, said “That state­ment is far from the truth. Noth­ing has been done since we met pri­or to school clos­ing. Noth­ing has been done what­so­ev­er. Just a lot of talk in the me­dia. We’ve not been ap­proached.”

He said his schools cur­rent­ly have around 12,000 stu­dents en­rolled, and he is will­ing to en­rol up to 13,000—al­low­ing some 1,000 mi­grant chil­dren spaces.

On Sat­ur­day, Gads­by-Dol­ly said dis­cus­sions have al­ready be­gun with the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty for grant­i­ng per­mits to the mi­grant stu­dents to legal­ly en­ter the pub­lic school sys­tem.

How­ev­er, Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry Schools’ Board of Ed­u­ca­tion (PPS­BE) chair­man, Vick­ram Ram­lal, was not op­ti­mistic the nec­es­sary doc­u­men­ta­tion would be grant­ed in time for the new aca­d­e­m­ic year. He too said they had no com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the min­istry.

“We have had one or two iso­lat­ed cas­es, maybe three for the most, (of) mi­grant fam­i­lies ap­proach­ing us for place­ment in schools, we iden­ti­fied places for them but we have not been able to get the pa­per­work com­plet­ed — the stu­dent per­mit that she’s (the Min­is­ter) talk­ing about. The bu­reau­cra­cy is re­al plen­ty,” he not­ed.

Oth­er cri­te­ria for stu­dents in­clude their par­ents be­ing reg­is­tered with the Gov­ern­ment and that the chil­dren must have all nec­es­sary vac­ci­na­tions.

TTUTA pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin al­so lament­ed that they were not con­sult­ed or had heard any­thing from the min­istry on the plan. He said the on­ly way they got any clar­i­ty was through con­tact­ing the CEBM. He added that they were al­so un­able to get an up­date on the va­ca­tion school re­pair pro­gramme.

In a What­sApped re­sponse to ques­tions on the is­sue yes­ter­day, Gads­by-Dol­ly said, “In 2019, the en­ti­ties in­volved in the ed­u­ca­tion of mi­grant chil­dren were the MoE, Catholic Ed­u­ca­tion Board, Liv­ing Wa­ter and UN­HCR. These are the en­ti­ties which form an Ed­u­ca­tion Work­ing Group, which is now work­ing to­wards in­te­gra­tion of mi­grant chil­dren in­to schools. UWI is al­so in­volved at this stage, as the num­ber of chil­dren ready for tran­si­tion is de­ter­mined.

“The CEBM has been in­volved from the start, and they have had teach­ers trained in cer­tain schools al­ready, there­fore, they are the log­i­cal start­ing point for in­te­gra­tion. The fi­nal stage of the dis­cus­sion in­volves the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion, as there are le­gal re­quire­ments to be met by for­eign na­tion­als en­ter­ing lo­cal schools. That is where we are at in the mul­ti­stage process. When it be­comes nec­es­sary to in­volve oth­er stake­hold­ers, they will be. That time has not yet come.”