Lee An­na Ma­haraj

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly has con­firmed that 18 schools out of 800 will be closed on Tues­day, fol­low­ing ad­verse weath­er con­di­tions.

While a to­tal of 52 schools have been af­fect­ed, with five be­ing di­rect­ly im­pact­ed by flood­ing and four by land­slides, most schools are set to re­open to­day.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on Mon­day via text mes­sage, Gads­by-Dol­ly said sev­er­al schools were un­able to re­open, and the min­istry ap­proved their clo­sure for Tues­day.

“18/800 schools in­di­cat­ed that they will not be able to open to­mor­row (Tues­day),” she said.

She added: “Schools that can­not open will be dealt with di­rect­ly by prin­ci­pals, who will in­form par­ents. We are al­ready ap­prov­ing clo­sures for such schools to­mor­row. For every oth­er school, as said, they open to­mor­row.”

The ma­jor­i­ty of schools will re­open, un­less flood re­lief ef­forts pre­vent ac­cess to the fa­cil­i­ties.

“The MoE (Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion) con­tin­ues to mon­i­tor the in­for­ma­tion sup­plied to us by the Min­istries of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, Pub­lic Util­i­ties and Works. Un­less fur­ther ad­vised, schools will open on Tues­day, 29th No­vem­ber, ex­cept in cas­es where ac­cess is com­pro­mised, or clean-up ac­tiv­i­ties are still on­go­ing. In those cas­es, prin­ci­pals will con­tact par­ents di­rect­ly,” Gads­by-Dol­ly said.

When asked if on­line class­es would be a bet­ter al­ter­na­tive for stu­dents for the rest of the school week, Gads­by-Dol­ly not­ed the po­si­tion of the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) on this mat­ter.

“Some schools which are af­fect­ed by weath­er or oth­er is­sues do go in­to the vir­tu­al mode, but TTUTA’s po­si­tion is that teach­ers’ job de­scrip­tions should in­clude both phys­i­cal and vir­tu­al modes of teach­ing be­fore teach­ers should agree to do vir­tu­al teach­ing. That dis­cus­sion is on­go­ing with the CPO (Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer) right now. So, in the in­ter­im, teach­ers are will­ing to en­gage stu­dents on­line when re­quired, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly all of them do so,” she said.

Yes­ter­day’s clean-up ac­tiv­i­ties were con­duct­ed in schools where the flood wa­ters sub­sided.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to the min­is­ter for a list of schools that will be closed on Tues­day, how­ev­er, up to late on Mon­day there was no re­sponse

Schools af­fect­ed by di­rect flood­ing:

North Oropouche RC.

North Oropouche Gov­ern­ment

St. He­le­na Pres­by­ter­ian

War­renville TIA EC­CE

Bam­boo Set­tle­ment Gov­ern­ment EC­CE

Schools af­fect­ed by land­slides:

Bras­so Ve­na­do Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry

Tal­paro RC

Mun­do Nue­vo

Mor­vant Laven­tille Sec­ondary