The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion says most stu­dents with­in the sys­tem at­tend­ed school for the open­ing of the new aca­d­e­m­ic year yes­ter­day. Al­so, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said “99% of the 830 pub­lic EC­CE, Pri­ma­ry and Sec­ondary Schools across Trinidad and To­ba­go,” were ready for their stu­dent pop­u­la­tion.

In a state­ment last evening, af­ter her min­istry made an as­sess­ment of the open­ing day’s ac­tiv­i­ty, Dr Gads­by-Dol­ly said on­ly 0.4 per cent of schools with re­pair works be­ing con­duct­ed on them did not open, while 0.6% of schools opened on ro­ta­tion due to ex­ten­sive re­pair works be­ing com­plet­ed. She said in all cas­es ex­cept one, re­pair works are card­ed to be com­plet­ed dur­ing the course of this week.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, the first day of the new school year al­so saw a 97 per cent teacher and 83 per cent stu­dent turn-out at pri­ma­ry schools, and a 94 per cent teacher and 82 per cent stu­dent turnout at sec­ondary schools.

Al­so as­sess­ing ac­tiv­i­ty on the open­ing day, Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin said two schools in South Trinidad had to be dis­missed ear­ly due to a lack of wa­ter as a re­sult of the dif­fi­cul­ties be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced by the Wa­ter and Sewage Au­thor­i­ty (WASA).

Lum Kin added that the Melville Memo­r­i­al Girls’ AC Pri­ma­ry School, which shares a com­pound with the St Mar­garet’s Boys’ AC Pri­ma­ry School in Bel­mont, was al­so dis­missed ear­ly be­cause they al­so had no wa­ter.

On Sun­day, WASA an­nounced that it would be col­lab­o­rat­ing with Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry to sup­ply schools af­fect­ed by the wa­ter woes in cen­tral and south Trinidad due to the shut­down of the De­sali­na­tion Com­pa­ny of T&T (De­sal­cott) over the week­end.

In a press re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day evening, WASA said De­sal­cott was back up to 85 per cent pro­duc­tion and de­scribed the joint ef­fort be­tween the min­istry and WASA as suc­cess­ful.

For many, yes­ter­day was their first day of school or the first time away from their fam­i­ly in ap­prox­i­mate­ly two months fol­low­ing the Ju­ly/Au­gust va­ca­tion.

There were al­so no re­ports of the heat af­fect­ing school staff or stu­dents at schools yes­ter­day. How­ev­er, Lum Kin called on his mem­bers to use their dis­cre­tion. He al­so re­mind­ed them that they should re­ject any at­tempts at on­line en­gage­ment. He said TTUTA will not sup­port this as the pol­i­cy has not been fi­nalised and the hy­brid learn­ing sys­tem was too ad hoc.

From as ear­ly as 7 am, par­ents and guardians gath­ered out­side schools to see their chil­dren off for the first day of the new school year. There were the tears, self­ies and ex­cite­ment among this group.

On the oth­er side, stu­dents were ex­cit­ed to see friends again, greet­ing them with huigs and kiss­es, and al­so to start an­oth­er chap­ter in their aca­d­e­m­ic lives.

One moth­er out­side St Cather­ine’s Girls’ An­gli­can School said her daugh­ter, who is in Sec­ond Year couldn’t, wait for school to re­open.

“They are ex­cit­ed, but she keep say­ing she’s late, she’s late,” she said.

“I can’t wait for Sec­ond Year,” the daugh­ter added.

How­ev­er, the moth­er ad­mit­ted that the morn­ing was hec­tic, es­pe­cial­ly since they had to leave home ear­ly to avoid the traf­fic.

In a mes­sage post­ed on Face­book to all stake­hold­ers ahead of the new school year, Gads­by-Dol­ly said she un­der­stood the com­mit­ment need­ed by all.

Dr Gads­by Dol­ly said, “I know as par­ents it’s dif­fi­cult some­times as we sup­port our chil­dren in their ed­u­ca­tion­al pur­suits, but I’m here to en­cour­age you keep on keep­ing on, keep on sup­port­ing them, it will all be worth it, our ef­forts will not be in vain, they need our sup­port more than they know. And we know that as par­ents, we want the best for them, so keep on sup­port­ing them in their ed­u­ca­tion­al jour­ney this aca­d­e­m­ic year.”

The Min­is­ter al­so said the year will hold chal­lenges but al­so told stu­dents they are strong enough to get through any­thing that comes their way.

“I want to en­cour­age you to work hard to get the ed­u­ca­tion you de­serve, ed­u­ca­tion, tru­ly this is the key to your life’s suc­cess. Your par­ents, your teach­ers and all of us a MoE are here to sup­port you in your jour­ney to suc­cess. Work hard, fo­cus, be dis­ci­plined, and you get your­self that ed­u­ca­tion, your coun­try is de­pend­ing on you to do this,” she said.

How­ev­er, Venezue­lan mi­grant chil­dren will have to wait a bit longer to re­ceive their chance, as the Min­is­ter said un­til the law is ad­just­ed by the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice mi­grant chil­dren can­not en­ter our schools legal­ly.

Gads­by-Dol­ly said the first co­hort of mi­grant stu­dents to be in­te­grat­ed, and the re­ceiv­ing schools, have al­ready been iden­ti­fied, and once the le­gal arrange­ments are fi­nalised, they will be reg­is­tered.