KE­JAN HAYNES

Lead Ed­i­tor News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, once again, re­ceived the high­est por­tion of the bud­get with an al­lo­ca­tion of $8.02 bil­lion.

In a ma­jor pol­i­cy de­ci­sion, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert an­nounced the es­tab­lish­ment of a school sup­plies and book grant of $1,000 in 2024 as part of this year’s bud­get al­lo­ca­tions. Im­bert es­ti­mat­ed this grant could cost $65 mil­lion and help 65,000 fam­i­lies.

“In recog­ni­tion of the cost of school uni­forms, sup­plies and text­books, I pro­pose to pro­vide in 2024 for needy stu­dents in pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school us­ing a suit­able means test, a school sup­plies and book grant of $1,000 to as­sist in meet­ing the cost of at­ten­dance at pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school,” Im­bert read.

Im­bert fo­cused heav­i­ly on the cost of school sup­plies, specif­i­cal­ly books, which he said were con­stant­ly be­ing up­grad­ed, mak­ing it im­pos­si­ble to pass down text­books from stu­dent to stu­dent.

“These con­tin­u­ous ad­di­tions and al­ter­ations to school book­lists make it vir­tu­al­ly im­pos­si­ble for gen­er­a­tional use of text­books and cre­ate ad­di­tion­al year­ly ex­pens­es for fam­i­lies,” Im­bert said.

“In 2024, there­fore, we in­tend to con­sult with all stake­hold­ers in the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor. Stan­dard­ised text­books as far as is prac­ti­cal, and elim­i­nate the prac­tice of un­nec­es­sary new text­books ar­riv­ing on the cur­ricu­lum every year.”

The an­nounce­ment was met with cheers from the Op­po­si­tion bench since they have been de­mand­ing the Gov­ern­ment im­ple­ment such a grant since last year. In March 2022 as schools were about to re­open for in-per­son class­es af­ter two years of vir­tu­al learn­ing, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar made her first call for a one-time “uni­form grant.” As re­cent­ly as Sep­tem­ber 28, Per­sad-Bisses­sar once again called for a $1,500 an­nu­al school grant.

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse at a post-bud­get press con­fer­ence, Per­sad-Bisses­sar list­ed the grant as one of the as­pects of the bud­get she was ac­tu­al­ly hap­py about. How­ev­er, she said she would have pre­ferred that the Gov­ern­ment an­nounced E-books in­stead of pa­per books.

TTUTA’s vice pres­i­dent Adesh Dwari­ka was al­so in sup­port of the mea­sures.

“The As­so­ci­a­tion would wel­come a book grant, es­pe­cial­ly to in­di­vid­u­als/stu­dents who need it the most. With the ad­vent of the COVID-19, we recog­nise that many stu­dents were dis­ad­van­taged as a re­sult of the COVID-19,” Dwari­ka said.

He al­so wel­comed the call for stan­dard­ised books.

“Some of the books, there are some mi­nor changes. And from year to year, those mi­nor changes add up in a lot of fi­nan­cial stress for many par­ents. I do not think that the cur­ricu­lum is go­ing to change in such dras­tic means over a short pe­ri­od of time. So ob­vi­ous­ly, the as­so­ci­a­tion would be in sup­port of any means, or any mea­sures tak­en by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to as­sist those stu­dents who are in need the most,” he said.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader has al­so been clam­our­ing for the re­turn of the lap­top dis­tri­b­u­tion pro­gramme. Im­bert in­di­cat­ed that the Gov­ern­ment would do so, stress­ing that it would con­tin­ue its lap­top pro­gramme.

“We con­tin­ue to make lap­tops avail­able to school­child­ren, ex­cept this time in a sane, sober and sen­si­ble way,” Im­bert said as his col­leagues pound­ed their desks in sup­port.

“Cur­rent­ly, we are mak­ing 2,400 fit-for-pur­pose lap­tops avail­able to stu­dents and as­so­ci­at­ed staff through the net­work of 94 sec­ondary schools.”

He said this new “dig­i­tal ecosys­tem” would of­fer on­line plat­forms and ser­vices for teach­ers and stu­dents to “re­spond ef­fec­tive­ly to the chang­ing needs of an in­creas­ing­ly dig­i­tal so­ci­ety, par­tic­u­lar­ly for busi­ness”.

The Fi­nance Min­is­ter said the coun­try saw marked im­prove­ment in grades among pupils who wrote the 2023 Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment ex­am­i­na­tion, but he lament­ed there was a “con­sis­tent and trou­bling per­cent­age of stu­dents who do not achieve 50 per cent or more in the ex­am”.

He praised what he called the suc­cess of the Va­ca­tion Re­vi­sion Pro­gramme, which he said would con­tin­ue. The pro­gramme be­gan in 2022.