All schools, in­clud­ing those af­fect­ed by the Au­gust 21 earth­quake, will be ready to open for the new aca­d­e­m­ic term on Mon­day, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia as­sured yes­ter­day.

“Over the hol­i­day pe­ri­od, we had sev­er­al con­trac­tors who were rec­ti­fy­ing prob­lems in the schools. Be­cause of the earth­quake, a num­ber of sew­er lines were dis­lodged and we had end­less prob­lems with the sew­er sys­tem. I am ad­vised that these prob­lems have been fixed and all schools are in a state of readi­ness for re­open­ing,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, class­es will re­sume at Bar­rack­pore East and Bar­rack­pore West Sec­ondary, while the Curepe An­gli­can School was found to be un­fit for oc­cu­pa­tion by the struc­tur­al en­gi­neers.

“We have de­cant­ed them to oth­er schools and we plan to retro­fit the school but if retro­fitting is not pos­si­ble, we will have to re­build the en­tire school,” he ex­plained.

A the To­co Sec­ondary School, an air-con­di­tioned tent is be­ing used to house the pupils.

“This will pro­vide ad­e­quate ac­com­mo­da­tion for now,” Gar­cia said.

On an­oth­er is­sue, the min­is­ter said he had no ev­i­dence that teach­ers will not be mark­ing School-Based As­sess­ments (SBAs) this year.

“Last year when that is­sue was raised by TTUTA, we had a le­gal opin­ion from the le­gal de­part­ment which was sup­port­ed by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and an opin­ion from the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer who stat­ed that the cor­rec­tion of SBA’s falls un­der the terms and con­di­tions of ser­vice of teach­ers. We could on­ly re­ly on the po­si­tions of ex­perts,” he said.

He said this term is con­sid­ered the prepa­ra­tion term be­fore the start of the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment ex­ams, Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate (CSEC) and the Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am­i­na­tions.

“We fore­see an ex­cel­lent school term and an ex­cel­lent aca­d­e­m­ic year,” he said.

How­ev­er, pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) Lyns­ley Doo­d­hai said teach­ers will not be mark­ing SBAs un­less they are paid ex­tra.

“Be­fore teach­ers would have marked SBA’s ini­tial­ly and they did it out of good­will. As years go by, more sub­jects are added to the SBA com­po­nent. The SBA’s are more de­tailed and re­quire more time. “SBAs were in­tro­duced now to Maths and Eng­lish A. Be­cause of the amount of work that goes with mark­ing SBAs, the teach­ers can­not do this dur­ing the nor­mal school hours be­cause it re­quires a lot of per­son­al time to mark SBAs,” he said.

Doo­d­hai said TTUTA filed a claim last year in­di­cat­ing that teach­ers should be paid ex­tra for mark­ing the SBA’s but the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer said this was part of their du­ty. As a re­sult, the union will be go­ing ahead to file le­gal ac­tion.

The TTUTA pres­i­dent said he was un­sure whether the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion had com­plet­ed re­pairs on all schools.

“We do not know what con­di­tion the schools will be in. We will know this when we go back to work,” Doo­d­hai said.

He al­so ap­pealed to par­ents to send their chil­dren out to school the week be­fore and af­ter Car­ni­val when there is usu­al­ly a poor stu­dent turnout.