Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Na­tion­al Par­ent-Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) pres­i­dent Wal­ter Stew­art says he has spo­ken to the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry about the lack of fur­ni­ture at the South East Port-of-Spain Sec­ondary School, and the min­istry has promised a quick so­lu­tion to the is­sue.

“We have been as­sured that the req­ui­site fur­ni­ture for the stu­dents at the school will be giv­en top pri­or­i­ty and that these chairs will be pro­vid­ed for the stu­dents quick­ly,” Stew­art said yes­ter­day.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the school needs ap­prox­i­mate­ly 300 new chairs.

Stew­art’s in­ter­ven­tion came af­ter par­ents learnt on Mon­day that stu­dents who at­tend the Nel­son Street-based school were put on a ro­ta­tion due to the lack of fur­ni­ture. Ac­cord­ing to the new sched­ule, Forms 1 and 2 will at­tend phys­i­cal class­es on Mon­day and Tues­day, while Forms 3 to 5 will at­tend on Mon­day, Wednes­day, and Fri­day.

Stew­art said, “The Na­tion­al Coun­cil of Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion shares the valid con­cern about stu­dents and par­ents of the South East Port of Spain Sec­ondary School, ful­ly aware of the dis­com­fort and the lack of qual­i­ty learn­ing time as a re­sult of the in­ad­e­qua­cy of fur­ni­ture, in par­tic­u­lar, chairs.”

Mean­while, a par­ent who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty ex­pressed con­cern for the Form Five stu­dents prepar­ing for next year’s Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate (CSEC) ex­ams. She not­ed they had writ­ten to the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry nu­mer­ous times over the past three years since the prob­lem be­gan.

“My main con­cern is if the stu­dents would be taught their full cur­ricu­lum at the end of the term,” the par­ent said.

She said the last let­ter was writ­ten to the min­is­ter in June and be­lieves the chairs could have been ac­quired dur­ing the Ju­ly/Au­gust va­ca­tion.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath toured the school in that same month af­ter a fight in­volv­ing stu­dents.

Pres­i­dent of the school’s alum­ni, Kwame Cowie, said they tried to raise the mon­ey but were un­able to. The alum­ni pres­i­dent added that while the need for chairs was tak­ing pri­or­i­ty, the school al­so need­ed desks for stu­dents and teach­ers.

A for­mer stu­dent, who grad­u­at­ed from the sec­ondary school this year, ex­plained just how dire the sit­u­a­tion was at South East Sec­ondary. The stu­dent said there were times when stu­dents had to leave the class in cer­tain cas­es to re­trieve chairs. Some of his peers, he said, stole chairs from oth­er class­es.

“There was even a case when it was our first day in Form Five that we had to sit on the ta­ble for the first cou­ple of pe­ri­ods, I be­lieve, be­cause there were no chairs for us at that time. And so, that has been hap­pen­ing for a while now, but I just think maybe it has got­ten worse, es­pe­cial­ly since a lot of us end up hav­ing to take chairs in some oth­er class­es,” he shared.

How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted there were al­so cas­es where some chil­dren were delin­quent in han­dling the fur­ni­ture, de­lib­er­ate­ly caus­ing dam­age. He added that there were al­so cas­es where teach­ers did not have chairs and re­fused to teach.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to for­mer Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly to ask whether she knew about the chair short­age at the school and re­ceived any re­quests for new ones dur­ing her tenure, but there was no re­sponse up to press time.