Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion, Re­search and Tech­nol­o­gy (DERTech) is re­fut­ing claims by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) that some schools in To­ba­go were un­fit for learn­ing at the be­gin­ning of the new aca­d­e­m­ic year.

On Mon­day, TTUTA To­ba­go Of­fi­cer Bradon Roberts said in an in­ter­view that par­ents were forced to leave Ma­son Hall Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School af­ter find­ing con­di­tions un­suit­able. He said re­pair works on the toi­lets cre­at­ed a sit­u­a­tion that com­pro­mised the health of both stu­dents and teach­ers.

“The re­pair works in the toi­lets start­ed last week, and they prob­a­bly an­tic­i­pat­ed it to be mi­nor and it would fin­ish on time. It was not fin­ished on time. They would have giv­en in­struc­tions for the prin­ci­pal to have the chil­dren, both male and fe­male, use the girls’ toi­lets. So the males and the boys and the girls will be in­ter­act­ing in the same space,” Roberts said.

He added that teach­ers and stu­dents were frus­trat­ed by the lack of prepa­ra­tion and called for greater ac­count­abil­i­ty from the di­vi­sion.

“So we hope that the di­vi­sion will get it to­geth­er. And what we al­ways clam­oured for was the clar­i­ty and the trans­paren­cy in what is hap­pen­ing. Even if the work is mi­nor, why wait un­til the last week to have work start­ed,” Roberts said.

But by Mon­day af­ter­noon, DERTech sent out a for­mal state­ment re­ject­ing TTUTA’s claims. The di­vi­sion con­firmed that Ma­son Hall Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School was the on­ly school where stu­dents ex­pe­ri­enced de­lays due to on­go­ing re­pair work. It ex­plained that retil­ing of the boys’ wash­rooms was un­der­tak­en as emer­gency works to ad­dress a per­sis­tent stench from the fa­cil­i­ty.

“The project was orig­i­nal­ly ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed be­fore school re­opened, but en­coun­tered ad­di­tion­al com­pli­ca­tions, ex­tend­ing the dead­line. Male stu­dents are ex­pect­ed to have full ac­cess to the wash­room fa­cil­i­ties from to­mor­row (Tues­day). Par­ents and guardians are there­fore as­sured that class­es at Ma­son Hall Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School will re­sume in full to­mor­row,” the di­vi­sion stat­ed.

Checks by Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day re­vealed the school was in ses­sion as planned yes­ter­day. An of­fi­cial from the di­vi­sion said enough work was done on the boys' wash­room mak­ing it suit­able for use.

But DERTech al­so strong­ly de­nied that male and fe­male stu­dents were in­struct­ed to share wash­rooms.

“DERTech cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly re­jects the false claim that male and fe­male stu­dents were in­struct­ed to share the same wash­room fa­cil­i­ties dur­ing this pe­ri­od of re­pair. At no time was such a di­rec­tive is­sued by the di­vi­sion. Any sug­ges­tion to the con­trary is mis­lead­ing and with­out ba­sis in fact,” the re­lease said.

Sec­re­tary of Ed­u­ca­tion Zor­isha Hack­ett al­so re­leased de­tailed at­ten­dance re­ports to prove the di­vi­sion’s po­si­tion that class­es were large­ly un­af­fect­ed across To­ba­go.

At the sec­ondary lev­el, stu­dent at­ten­dance stood at 78.7 per cent, while teacher at­ten­dance reached 89.8 per cent. Pri­ma­ry schools record­ed 79.3 per cent of stu­dents and 95.6 per cent of teach­ers present. Ear­ly Child­hood Care and Ed­u­ca­tion (EC­CE) cen­tres re­port­ed the low­est stu­dent turnout at 62 per cent, but had the high­est teacher pres­ence at 96.1 per cent.

At Ma­son Hall Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, where Roberts raised con­cerns, just 13 per­cent of stu­dents at­tend­ed class­es on the first day, though all teach­ers re­port­ed for du­ty.

Over­all, across all schools in To­ba­go on the first day of the school year, 78.4 per cent of stu­dents and 93 per­cent of teach­ers were in at­ten­dance.

How­ev­er, Roberts main­tained that the is­sue was not on­ly about phys­i­cal re­pairs but al­so about com­mu­ni­ca­tion and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

“What we al­ways clam­oured for was the clar­i­ty and the trans­paren­cy in what is hap­pen­ing,” Roberts said.