One clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist says the men­tal health of chil­dren and their abil­i­ty to learn could be af­fect­ed by the poor in­fra­struc­ture at schools.

Clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist Van­dana Siew Sankar-Ali says this is why par­ents need to work close­ly with school ad­min­is­tra­tion to find so­lu­tions to the in­fra­struc­tur­al short­falls in the short­est pos­si­ble time in the in­ter­est of their chil­dren’s well-be­ing.

On Mon­day, the Palmyra Hin­du SDMS Pri­ma­ry School was closed on the first day of the aca­d­e­m­ic year be­cause of a rat in­fes­ta­tion. Staff al­so com­plained of a stench em­a­nat­ing from a room on the com­pound.

Siew Sankar-Ali said these are le­git­i­mate dis­trac­tions that could pre­vent chil­dren from con­cen­trat­ing on school­work.

“If there’s con­cerns about rats, snakes...we live in the Caribbean, a lot of this is pos­si­ble,” she said.

The neg­a­tive im­pacts could wors­en, she said, if the child is aware of the in­fes­ta­tion and then be­comes afraid of en­coun­ter­ing these pests at school.

Yes­ter­day, par­ents of stu­dents at­tend­ing Ma­yaro Sec­ondary School staged a protest to call at­ten­tion to what they de­scribed as the sub­stan­dard state of the school. There were com­plaints of class­rooms with­out desks or chairs, over­grown bush along­side the school com­pound, and a par­tial­ly col­lapsed struc­ture on the cam­pus it­self that could present a health and safe­ty risk to both stu­dents and staff.

School pre­fect Isa­iah Mooni­lal told Guardian Me­dia his class­mates were forced to spend hours wait­ing for ac­cess to a us­able class­room. He said they al­so had to spend time in the hot sun as they had lim­it­ed ac­cess to shel­ter.

Siew Sankar-Ali said there had been a lot of re­search on the im­pact the phys­i­cal learn­ing en­vi­ron­ment can have on stu­dents’ learn­ing and aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance.

“The re­search is con­clu­sive, there is a neg­a­tive im­pact and so we see that if stu­dents are deal­ing with poor light­ing, poor air qual­i­ty, is­sues with ven­ti­la­tion—all of these af­fect a child’s abil­i­ty to con­cen­trate, pay at­ten­tion in the class­room,” the clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist said.

Fund­ing and re­pairs

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Nyan Gad­by-Dol­ly has re­peat­ed­ly lament­ed the chal­lenges fac­ing the min­istry, as it re­lates to the main­te­nance of age­ing school struc­tures and re­pairs.

On­ly on Tues­day, she said the chal­lenges in school re­pairs stemmed from a lack of suf­fi­cient fund­ing. She ex­plained the $5 bil­lion bud­get al­lo­ca­tion for ed­u­ca­tion is most­ly used for re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture, leav­ing just $150 mil­lion for re­pairs.

Dur­ing the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee meet­ing on Oc­to­ber 17, 2023, in re­sponse to a ques­tion from Op­po­si­tion MP Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne, the min­is­ter said age­ing schools had placed a lot of pres­sure on the min­istry’s al­lo­ca­tion for emer­gency re­pairs. How­ev­er, the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry al­so did not make any ad­di­tion­al re­quests to its bud­get, specif­i­cal­ly for school re­pairs.

On Au­gust 19, the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry re­leased da­ta that showed 55 per cent of pri­ma­ry schools and 39 per cent of sec­ondary schools had passed their de­sign life, and that 50 per cent of its 27 crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture works were com­plet­ed for $171 mil­lion ($171,269,381.23 specif­i­cal­ly) and 93 per cent of the Ju­ly-Au­gust Crit­i­cal Re­pair Pro­gramme 2023 was com­plet­ed at a cost of $51 mil­lion ($51,731,994.18).

‘In­clude stu­dents in so­lu­tions’

Siew Sanker-Ali said par­ents of stu­dents as­signed to schools with poor fa­cil­i­ties need to be proac­tive and work with the school ad­min­is­tra­tion to find so­lu­tions that would ben­e­fit their chil­dren in the short and long term. “Trans­par­ent com­mu­ni­ca­tion is very im­por­tant, where par­ents are free to ex­press how they feel. Teach­ers should al­so be able to ex­plain the sit­u­a­tion based on the in­for­ma­tion that is avail­able to them, and I think they need to come to­geth­er to ad­vo­cate to the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to in­di­cate that the sit­u­a­tion is hav­ing a par­tic­u­lar im­pact,” she said.

She al­so said the stu­dents should not be left out of the search for so­lu­tions, as they are the ones di­rect­ly af­fect­ed by the prob­lem. The clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist stressed in­put from stu­dents should be con­sid­ered in the so­lu­tion.