Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Schools are on track to re­open come Feb­ru­ary 8 de­spite the ar­rival of the re­cent case of the new COVID-19 UK vari­ant in the coun­try.

The de­ci­sion to go ahead with the planned re­open­ing came af­ter the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion met with Min­istry of Health of­fi­cials yes­ter­day. In a state­ment to Guardian Me­dia fol­low­ing the meet­ing, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said: “The dis­cus­sions to­day were cen­tred around en­sur­ing that all pro­to­cols would be very clear for re­open­ing. Based on the present num­bers, there is no in­di­ca­tion that the plan to re­open on Feb­ru­ary 8th can­not pro­ceed, new vari­ant notwith­stand­ing.”

Gads­by-Dol­ly in­di­cat­ed that there was the pos­si­bil­i­ty that a blend­ed, shift ap­proach would be used for sec­ondary school stu­dents.

“For the sec­ondary schools, at our meet­ings with stake­hold­ers, it was sug­gest­ed that the em­pha­sis on phys­i­cal class­es be for labs and SBAs, while stu­dents could con­tin­ue most of the con­cep­tu­al work on­line,” Gads­by-Dol­ly said.

“Of course, this would vary by school. There­fore, for sec­ondary school, the pres­ence of stu­dents in the com­pound could be more eas­i­ly stag­gered.

“For pri­ma­ry school, how­ev­er, the sit­u­a­tion is dif­fer­ent, and so the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion will work with the Min­istry of Health to en­sure that the pro­to­cols are very clear­ly out­lined and un­der­stood, as we work to avoid pre­ma­ture school clo­sure.”

The min­is­ter an­tic­i­pates that by ear­ly next week, the guide­lines for re­open­ing should be avail­able for schools “in an­tic­i­pa­tion of a Feb­ru­ary 8th start if all goes well.”

On­ly yes­ter­day, the Min­istry of Health an­nounced that a na­tion­al who re­turned from the Unit­ed King­dom had test­ed pos­i­tive for the new vari­ant of the virus and was now be­ing treat­ed at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal.

Schools were closed one day af­ter the first case of COVID-19 was re­port­ed in T&T on March 13, 2020, by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley. They re­main closed to date as teach­ers are con­duct­ing vir­tu­al class­es, which be­gan in Sep­tem­ber. On Ju­ly 20, 2020, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion at­tempt­ed to restart class­es for Stan­dard Five stu­dents in prepa­ra­tion for the then resched­uled SEA ex­am­i­na­tion but it was short-lived as sev­er­al COVID-19 out­breaks oc­curred in at least 12 schools, forc­ing the ter­mi­na­tion of that plan.