RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Over 90 projects are on­go­ing at the na­tion’s schools as the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion gets ready for the pos­si­ble phys­i­cal re­open­ing of schools next month.

On­ly stu­dents from Forms Four, Five and Six are ex­pect­ed to re­turn on Feb­ru­ary 8.

But in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said while works con­tin­ue in some schools, oth­er schools are ear­marked to be used as an ex­am­i­na­tion cen­tre for the CXC Jan­u­ary ex­ams which be­gin on Jan­u­ary 18.

“Phys­i­cal­ly, schools are gen­er­al­ly pre­pared for the pos­si­ble open­ing. School re­pair projects con­tin­ue, with over 90 projects on­go­ing at this time. Any is­sues which have arisen at schools are be­ing pri­or­i­tized, in­clud­ing plac­ing sinks at en­trances where need­ed,” she said.

She not­ed that the third draft of the Re­open­ing Guide­lines has been pre­pared and will be dis­cussed with health of­fi­cials to en­sure there is lit­tle risk to stu­dents and staff.

“There are no in­di­ca­tions of more chal­lenges than were faced in Term One. How­ev­er, more stu­dents con­tin­ue to re­ceive de­vices through the Adopt-a-School pro­gramme. This should al­le­vi­ate some of the is­sues be­ing faced,” she added.

So far 10,000 de­vices have been do­nat­ed.

 “The dis­tri­b­u­tion of TATT de­vices to stu­dents, pri­or­i­tiz­ing Stan­dards Five and Forms Five and Six have be­gun across the coun­try. Eight hun­dred were dis­trib­uted to schools in De­cem­ber, and by next week, 2,400 more should be sent out to schools,” Gads­by-Dol­ly said not­ing that 10,000 de­vices do­nat­ed will be dis­trib­uted to schools over the next few weeks. 

The Min­is­ter al­so said that teacher train­ing con­tin­ues.

“Teach­ers start­ed on Jan­u­ary 11 with on­line train­ing from Notes­Mas­ters in the Unit­ed King­dom which is based on the use of on­line con­tent pre­pared by lo­cal teach­ers as well as the abil­i­ty to cre­ate con­tent on this plat­form. So the train­ing of teach­ers which be­gan in March 2020 and con­tin­ued for the rest of that year con­tin­ues in­to 2021,” she ex­plained. 

Sup­port is al­so be­ing giv­en to stu­dents vir­tu­al­ly through Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices.

“These of­fi­cers re­ceived train­ing in on­line de­liv­ery and have been in­ter­act­ing vir­tu­al­ly with stu­dents since that time, so that sys­tem is still avail­able and we en­cour­age stu­dents to ac­cess it,” she added. 

Mean­while, sec­re­tary-gen­er­al of the Sanathan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS) Vi­jay Ma­haraj said while both pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools owned by the Ma­ha Sab­ha are ready for re­open­ing, the SDMS want­ed the gov­ern­ment to bring out Stan­dard Fours as well.

“Schools are large enough to main­tain so­cial dis­tanc­ing for both Stan­dard Fours and Stan­dard Fives. For the sec­ondary schools, we sug­gest CXC Ex­am stu­dents from Forms 5 and 6, not the Form Fours,” Ma­haraj said.

How­ev­er, he rec­om­mend­ed that Form Fours be al­lowed to stay home.

“This time of the year T&T has a Car­ni­val men­tal­i­ty and we be­lieve this will threat­en health pro­to­cols and push back schools re­open­ing,” he added.

He al­so said there are no fixed teach­ing hours or for lunch and re­cess.

 “Will par­ents send their chil­dren to school or will fear and ru­mour­mon­ger­ing af­fect the re­open­ing at­tempt,” Ma­haraj said.

He said the school feed­ing pro­gramme should re­sume once schools re­sume cater­ing for needy chil­dren.