Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds has con­demned the re­cent “un­con­scionable” protests tak­en by TTUTA to stay away from schools in light of the neg­a­tive im­pact COVID-19 had on stu­dents’ aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mances.

He made the com­ment at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of The AR­ROW (Au­r­al, Read, Re­spond, Oral, Write) Foun­da­tion Lit­er­a­cy Day Ex­trav­a­gan­za at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

Hinds said the pan­dem­ic had dis­rupt­ed stu­dents’ lives and had “an ad­verse im­pact” on learn­ing “not just in Trinidad but in the re­gion and the world.”

He said con­sid­er­ing the re­gres­sions in stu­dents’ ed­u­ca­tion, he “could not help but ob­serve and take dis­af­fec­tion with some of the teach­ers.”

He said there were oth­er ways in which teach­ers could have re­solved their griev­ances with­out sub­ject­ing the na­tion’s chil­dren to an ad­di­tion­al loss of school­ing.

“To go fur­ther to de­ny these chil­dren of these de­vel­op­men­tal tools, I found to be un­con­scionable and there­fore could not sup­port that con­duct,” Hinds said.

Fol­low­ing Hinds’ state­ments, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said the Gov­ern­ment has recog­nised the need to de­vote re­sources to T&T’s chil­dren and en­sure they re­cu­per­ate from “be­ing on the brink” due to the pan­dem­ic. She said that this year’s bud­getary al­lot­ments will ac­count for this short­fall.

“You would have seen $50 mil­lion al­lo­cat­ed in this year’s bud­get to­wards re­me­di­al ed­u­ca­tion... it means that we recog­nise that we are go­ing to have to in­vest in help­ing our chil­dren re­cov­er from COVID and its ef­fects be­cause that is where we be­gin to take back our coun­try, take back our chil­dren.”

Gads­by-Dol­ly said COVID-19 did not on­ly im­pact the scholas­tic per­for­mance of stu­dents but oth­er ar­eas al­so.

“The learn­ing loss is not just aca­d­e­m­ic, it is so­cial, eco­nom­ic in some cas­es for these chil­dren, it is psy­cho­log­i­cal and there­fore the ef­fect of that and the mit­i­ga­tion of that will take a lot of ef­fort from us all.”

She said the rou­tine stu­dents were ac­cus­tomed to while go­ing to school had al­so been bro­ken and at­tempts to rein­te­grate them in­to a sense of nor­mal­cy were prov­ing to be dif­fi­cult.

Gads­by-Dol­ly said the min­istry, along with the AR­ROW Foun­da­tion, will im­prove the qual­i­ty of ed­u­ca­tion with­in East Port-of-Spain schools. The Gov­ern­ment was in­ject­ing more re­sources in­to schools and is cur­rent­ly aid­ing 26 sec­ondary schools in this man­ner and will soon be in­cor­po­rat­ing sev­er­al pri­ma­ry schools in­to the mix, she not­ed.

AR­ROW Foun­da­tion di­rec­tor Christo­pher Bon­terre said they part­nered with Shell Trinidad and To­ba­go to sup­port lit­er­a­cy train­ing for pupils across pri­ma­ry schools, specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ing 20 schools lo­cat­ed in East Port-of-Spain.

The lo­cal AR­ROW Foun­da­tion, a branch of one of the UK’s Lead­ing Lit­er­a­cy pro­gramme, is a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion that has trans­formed the lives of thou­sands of chil­dren in over 200 schools across T&T over the past 16 years.

Bon­terre ex­plained that in the com­ing years, this col­lab­o­ra­tion will not on­ly help the stu­dents but “gen­er­ate over 3,500 pow­er­ful stu­dent in­ter­ven­tion pro­grammes over the next three years, in­clud­ing one on one in­ter­ven­tions for all chil­dren with spe­cial needs, all chil­dren who have a learn­ing dis­abil­i­ty and will pro­vide on­go­ing train­ing and in­ter­na­tion­al cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for over 120 teach­ers.”

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s event, stu­dents from dif­fer­ent schools were in­vit­ed to par­take in a myr­i­ad of ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing sto­ry­telling, word scram­bles, puz­zles as well as colour­ing ac­tiv­i­ties.