Thir­ty-five thou­sand stu­dents re­turned to school yes­ter­day, as the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry opened schools on a phased ba­sis for stu­dents in Forms 4, 5 and 6.

But ac­cord­ing to TTUTA some stu­dents were flout­ing the health prot­cols in place to keep them COVID free.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia at the St Au­gus­tine Sec­ondary School, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter, Dr Nyan Gads­by Dol­ly an­nounced that the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment ex­am­i­na­tion will be held on June 10.

She added that CSEC ex­am­i­na­tions will com­mence from June 1.

The Min­is­ter said the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tion Coun­cil -CXC - has sent out its but arrange­ments are still to be fi­nalised with re­gards to the for­mat for 2021.

“So we do have a meet­ing which will in­volve the Min­is­ters of Ed­u­ca­tion in the Caribbean on the 26th of this month, where the min­is­ters will come to­geth­er to ex­press their views on the arrange­ment that has been pro­posed so far for the 2021 ex­am­i­na­tions.”

The Min­is­ter said a chal­lenge to the phased phys­i­cal re­open­ing of schools was that some stu­dents have grown ac­cus­tomed to the on­line en­vi­ron­ment and there are con­cerns about safe­ty.

“My daugh­ter goes out to­day and I do share some of that anx­i­ety. We are in a pan­dem­ic and we know what is hap­pen­ing around the world but I would say that the gov­ern­ment has done the best it can in these cir­cum­stance to en­sure the safe­ty of the coun­try. You will know our num­bers are pret­ty low and it did not come just like that it came from the pop­u­la­tion tak­ing the steps that they need­ed to. So at this point, we are tak­ing the rea­son­able steps, we brought out on­ly the stu­dents that are com­plete­ly nec­es­sary to come out and we have tak­en the steps at the school lev­el with ad­e­quate san­i­ti­za­tion sta­tions, we have put in place the pro­to­col for en­try and the class­rooms”, Min­is­ter Gads­by-Dol­ly said.

Mean­while, TTUTA Pres­i­dent An­to­nia Tekah-De Fre­itas said it was not a smooth re­open­ing yes­ter­day.

She said the na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive along with the dis­trict of­fi­cers had vis­it­ed schools across T&T where they found some phys­i­cal premis­es lack­ing.

Among the is­sues cit­ed was the re­place­ment of gas lines, vents and hoods in some school lab­o­ra­to­ries; and the re­place­ment of di­lap­i­dat­ed roof­ing in sev­er­al oth­er schools.

The TTUTA head said this would have been part of the pre-ex­ist­ing health and safe­ty works that re­quired ur­gent at­ten­tion but may not have been pos­si­ble due to the small fi­nan­cial al­lo­ca­tions re­ceived from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

De­clin­ing to name the schools or even the ed­u­ca­tion dis­tricts where this would have oc­curred, she said, “Prin­ci­pals, once they got the fund­ing they re­quired…rushed out and pro­cured what they had to, to make sure stu­dents had sup­plies and equip­ment and ma­te­ri­als to do their labs and prac­ti­cals for the School-Based As­sess­ments to­day.”

In schools where re­pairs were not ef­fect­ed in time, Tekah-De Fre­itas said these stu­dents would not have been able to com­plete the sched­uled tasks.

The TTUTA pres­i­dent al­so said that de­spite the health pro­to­cols

the stu­dents them­selves in some in­stances were found to be flout­ing the reg­u­la­tions.

She ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment.

“Some of the stu­dents were still not ex­er­cis­ing per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to fol­low the mask-wear­ing and so­cial dis­tanc­ing man­dates, so we know that is some­thing they will have to be re­mind­ed of on a fre­quent ba­sis.”

“We hope they will soon fall in­to line with this short­ly.”

Tekah-De Fre­itas said re­ports of staff short­ages had al­so been re­ceived from some schools, “not be­cause the teach­ers did not show up or re­port for as­signed du­ties but be­cause va­can­cies would have arisen dur­ing the last school year and were not yet filled.”

She said an analy­sis of this cur­rent arrange­ment would have to be done be­fore any dis­cus­sions could be had re­lat­ing to a whole-school re­sump­tion.

Stan­dard Five stu­dents are sched­uled to re­turn to class­es on April 12.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said the next phased open­ing will be done, “once all goes well with our COVID-19 num­bers.”