Am­bi­ka Ja­gas­sars­ingh

am­bi­ka.ja­gas­sars­ingh@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly has called is urg­ing cit­i­zens not to be­come de­feat­ed by all the dis­rup­tions oc­cur­ring with­in the school sys­tem.

She made the com­ment at the open­ing of the Mara­cas Val­ley Sev­enth Day Ad­ven­tist EC­CE cen­tre yes­ter­day, as she en­cour­aged par­ents, teach­ers and stu­dents to have hope in the wake of sev­er­al neg­a­tive in­ci­dents with­in the school sys­tem.

“Let’s not be mired in the neg­a­tiv­i­ty even though it may threat­en to over­whelm us, there are still pos­i­tive things hap­pen­ing...What we are see­ing is a mi­nor­i­ty. The ma­jor­i­ty of our young peo­ple are work­ing hard and as­sid­u­ous­ly and be­ing pro­duc­tive cit­i­zens and so we must cel­e­brate that even as we take steps to deal with those who need more sup­port,” Gads­by-Dol­ly said.

She said over the years, the Gov­ern­ment has in­vest­ed a great deal of mon­ey in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem for the fur­ther en­hance­ment of T&T.

“Why are we ex­pend­ing over $5 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly in ed­u­ca­tion? We’re ex­pend­ing that be­cause we un­der­stand as a Gov­ern­ment that if we do not have the cit­i­zens to dri­ve our coun­try's de­vel­op­ment, then we are go­ing nowhere.”

Gads­by-Dol­ly ac­knowl­edged the tu­mul­tuous ac­tiv­i­ty that has been tak­ing place in schools over the past term. She said these up­heavals were “dif­fi­cult to swal­low” since “it makes you won­der if this is them now, what will be their fate in a few years.”

The Min­is­ter said par­ents al­so need to play their parts in form­ing the minds of our young ones in or­der to help the coun­try.

“Let us hold on to our chil­dren and let us not al­low them to de­vel­op with­out our in­flu­ence. Let us do what we can and what we have to do to en­sure that they de­vel­op in­to the cit­i­zens that we want in our coun­try and that this in­vest­ment, sim­i­lar to what we are see­ing here, bears the fruit that car­ries Trinidad and To­ba­go in­to a pos­i­tive di­rec­tion.”

South­ern Caribbean Con­fer­ence of the Sev­enth Day Ad­ven­tist pres­i­dent, Pas­tor Leslie Moses, called the open­ing a his­toric day for Trinidad and To­ba­go, not­ing pupils will be able to ac­cess every lev­el of ed­u­ca­tion with­in the same com­pound.

“This is the on­ly cam­pus on which ex­ists all lev­els of ed­u­ca­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, a child can start here on this cam­pus at age three, then grad­u­ate to the pri­ma­ry school in walk­ing dis­tance from this in­sti­tu­tion then walk a few steps fur­ther in and get to the sec­ondary school on this cam­pus and, of course, it is all the own­er­ship of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the South­ern Caribbean. So, a child can ac­tu­al­ly leave EC­CE and go straight up to a doc­tor­al de­gree and not leave this cam­pus,” em­pha­sised Moses.