Akash Sama­roo

“They wicked to do the poor chil­dren that!” the gas sta­tion at­ten­dant shout­ed to her co-work­ers as she wiped the sweat from her face which was brought on by the dread­ed mid­day heat.

“How they go put my child in this heat?”

Her con­cern was that dur­ing these high­er than av­er­age tem­per­a­tures, schools were still con­duct­ing as­sem­blies in the open air. Some­thing that she said has the chil­dren feel­ing de­hy­drat­ed and weak. And she’s not alone.

Even at our of­fices in Guardian Me­dia, par­ents of stu­dents were com­plain­ing that it is un­fair to have chil­dren ex­posed to this lev­el of heat.

A counter-ar­gu­ment could be that at the time of morn­ing as­sem­blies it’s not the hottest time of the day. But there is some­thing called the Heat In­dex or ‘the feels like’ tem­per­a­ture. That is a com­bi­na­tion of the air tem­per­a­ture, hu­mid­i­ty and wind speeds. So for ex­am­ple at 8 am yes­ter­day the tem­per­a­ture was 29 de­grees Cel­sius but it felt like 34 de­grees Cel­sius.

And chil­dren are more sus­cep­ti­ble to de­hy­dra­tion than adults as they have high­er body wa­ter con­tent along with high­er meta­bol­ic rates.

“It’s some­thing we have to look at, we will talk with our prin­ci­pals and school su­per­vi­sors be­cause the safe­ty of our stu­dents is up­per­most in our minds.”

That was the re­sponse of Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter, An­tho­ny Gar­cia when Guardia Me­dia ap­proached him on the mat­ter.

Gar­cia said prin­ci­pals are al­lowed to use their dis­cre­tion with re­spect to how the morn­ing as­sem­bly is con­duct­ed and he said there are op­tions at their dis­pos­al.

“Most of our schools are equipped with a pub­lic ad­dress (PA) sys­tem so in some cir­cum­stances we can con­duct the as­sem­bly us­ing that sys­tem,” he said.

Gar­cia said morn­ing as­sem­blies must take place as it is para­mount in in­still­ing dis­ci­pline and set­ting the tone for the day.

“The as­sem­bly must be con­sid­ered as the first pe­ri­od of the ac­tiv­i­ties at the school,” he added

Mean­while, pres­i­dent of the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion Lyns­ley Doo­d­hai agreed with the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter that prin­ci­pals should use their dis­cre­tion.

“If you are hav­ing the as­sem­bly in the open air and it is rain­ing, then you will not have it, so the same log­ic must be ap­plied there, the sun is hot, and the chil­dren will suf­fer and be un­com­fort­able. There­fore the as­sem­bly could be held in the class­room where you can still sing the Na­tion­al An­them and the prayer, ” he said.

Doo­d­hai said some prin­ci­pals al­ready ap­ply this log­ic.

But the First Vice Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Pri­ma­ry Schools Prin­ci­pals As­so­ci­a­tion Paula Kalk­man said most pri­ma­ry school prin­ci­pals do not ex­pose the chil­dren to di­rect heat dur­ing morn­ing as­sem­blies and their best prac­tise stip­u­lates that as­sem­blies should be no longer than fif­teen min­utes.

She ad­mit­ted that not all schools are equipped with a PA sys­tem but said that if chil­dren are be­ing kept out in the sun then it may be a rare cir­cum­stance and par­ents should re­port it to the as­so­ci­a­tion.