RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Stan­dard Five pupils of Canaan Pres­by­ter­ian School will re­turn to class­es to­day in the church hall, near­ly three weeks af­ter a fire de­stroyed the school’s main class­room block in Dun­can Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do.

The Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry Schools’ Board of Ed­u­ca­tion and the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion are con­tin­u­ing to arrange tem­po­rary ac­com­mo­da­tion for oth­er pupils while as­sess­ments are con­duct­ed to de­ter­mine whether the re­main­ing build­ings are safe.

A Board of­fi­cial told Guardian Me­dia that arrange­ments were be­ing fi­nalised for Stan­dards Three, Four and Five. The Min­istry ap­proved the use of the church hall for Stan­dard Five pupils at about 2 pm yes­ter­day, the of­fi­cial said.

“From day one, the Board has been work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and rel­e­vant State agen­cies to fi­nalise arrange­ments for the tem­po­rary re­lo­ca­tion of the pupils, but we have to ob­tain the nec­es­sary ap­provals for de­mo­li­tion of the dam­aged block and re­store elec­tric­i­ty to parts of the com­pound,” the of­fi­cial said.

The fire oc­curred on Oc­to­ber 14. The Works Min­is­ter vis­it­ed the school on Oc­to­ber 26 to as­sess the dam­aged block’s struc­tur­al in­tegri­ty.

A re­port from that as­sess­ment is ex­pect­ed to be sub­mit­ted to the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry.

The Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny Ltd and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion are al­so ex­pect­ed to re­port on whether pow­er can be re­stored to the ad­min­is­tra­tive block and an­oth­er build­ing that could ac­com­mo­date pupils.

The Board is work­ing with the school su­per­vi­sor, prin­ci­pal and a Par­ent-Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion rep­re­sen­ta­tive to iden­ti­fy suit­able tem­po­rary lo­ca­tions.

“We went to Debe Pres­by­ter­ian, Pic­ton Pres­by­ter­ian and the church halls to see where we could put the Stan­dard Threes, be­cause the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres are not ap­pro­pri­ate,” the of­fi­cial said.

A PTA rep­re­sen­ta­tive said par­ents re­mained con­cerned about the loss of teach­ing time. Pupils have re­ceived school­work dai­ly, but for­mal class­room teach­ing of new top­ics has not re­sumed since the fire.

The rep­re­sen­ta­tive said teach­ers were mark­ing pupils’ work, but the chil­dren were not re­ceiv­ing class­room in­struc­tion. The lack of on­line lessons had al­so af­fect­ed con­ti­nu­ity in learn­ing, the par­ent said, adding that teach­ers had been in­struct­ed by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion not to con­duct on­line class­es.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath said a de­tailed up­date would be pro­vid­ed soon.