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Tuesday, August 26, 2025

TTUTA says teachers not unprepared as MOE explores possible changes

by

Anna-Lisa Paul
1944 days ago
20200429
Antonia De Freitas, President of the Trinidad and Tobago Unified Teachers' Association (TTUTA).

Antonia De Freitas, President of the Trinidad and Tobago Unified Teachers' Association (TTUTA).

An­na-Lisa Paul

In the ab­sence of a COVID-19 vac­cine, so­cial dis­tanc­ing and stricter hy­giene mea­sures seem to be the on­ly ef­fec­tive sys­tems thus far, that have been suc­cess­ful in stem­ming the spread of the nov­el coro­n­avirus.

And as schools in some coun­tries across the world slow­ly re­opened their doors, ques­tions are now be­ing asked as to what will be the new nor­mal in T&T when the au­thor­i­ties give the green light for stu­dents to re­turn.

An of­fi­cial at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion said while dis­cus­sions are yet to take place on how the school day will run when­ev­er school re­opens, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that in­struc­tions have been is­sued to se­nior ad­min­is­tra­tors to ex­plore if and how phys­i­cal re­con­fig­ur­ing could be done.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia yes­ter­day said, "I know that when schools re­open, it will not be the same. In this re­gard, I have re­quest­ed a tech­ni­cal team from the min­istry to meet and come up with a plan for how we will treat with this and what mea­sures we can take to pre­serve the health and safe­ty of both our stu­dents and teach­ers."

While the min­istry con­tin­ues to meet with rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers to com­pile a com­pre­hen­sive map on the way for­ward, ed­u­ca­tion stake­hold­ers have said there is still no clear pol­i­cy doc­u­ment out­lin­ing how the new school term will op­er­ate or what changes will be done to re­con­fig­ure the phys­i­cal class­rooms to suit the new nor­mal.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, there is no word on whether or not there will be stag­gered hours for stu­dents, and if on­line teach­ing and learn­ing will be­come part of the dai­ly/week­ly sched­ule.

T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) Pres­i­dent, An­to­nia Tekah-De Fre­itas said cer­tain mea­sures im­ple­ment­ed in schools that have re­opened in Chi­na, Den­mark and Ger­many - did not re­quire as much re­con­fig­u­ra­tion be­cause of their pre­vi­ous lay­out.

She said, "They al­ready had the space to ex­pand their class­room func­tion­al­i­ty and can prac­tice so­cial dis­tanc­ing. They have com­mon ar­eas where au­to­mat­ic sani­tis­ers can be in­stalled and their class­rooms are al­ready air-con­di­tioned. We are chal­lenged by all all those things."

Tekah-De Fre­itas said lo­cal of­fi­cials were chal­lenged to ex­plore, "How we are open­ing in terms of our in­fra­struc­ture and class­room lay­out as we sim­ply do not have the space in many of our schools which are al­ready crowd­ed."

Adding that fo­cus al­so need­ed to be paid to which groups would be called to re­turn to school first, the TTUTA head said, "Even if we look at the sug­ges­tion to stag­ger hours so In­fants to Stan­dard Two stu­dents are told to at­tend school for the morn­ing pe­ri­od, the is­sue of trans­port and col­lec­tion of these per­sons will come in­to play as we would still have the is­sue of su­per­vi­sion whilst they are on the com­pound...and in the name of so­cial dis­tanc­ing as the old­er chil­dren are com­ing in, will need to be ad­dressed."

She said it would be eas­i­er to in­tro­duce new sys­tems at the sec­ondary lev­el.

TTUTA's Gen­er­al Coun­cil is due to meet to­day, and Tekah-De Fre­itas said these con­cerns will be dis­cussed fol­low­ing which a doc­u­ment out­lin­ing their po­si­tion will be for­ward­ed to the MOE.

She added, "As part of the COVID-19 re­cov­ery....ed­u­ca­tion stake­hold­ers such as the par­ents, teach­ers and prin­ci­pals are hop­ing to have some kind of dis­cus­sion with the State on that plan and must in­clude how our schools op­er­ate from here on out."

Claim­ing the en­tire world had been caught off-guard by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and the re­sul­tant ef­fects in­clud­ing the shut­ting down of schools, busi­ness­es, and oth­er ser­vices - Tekah-De Fre­itas dis­missed pub­lic per­cep­tions that teach­ers were not per­form­ing as they should dur­ing this pe­ri­od.

She de­fend­ed her mem­bers as she ar­gued, "No­body ex­pect­ed when we left school on March 13, that we would be out of school and un­der Stay At Home or­ders for so long. From March 16, teach­ers be­gan reach­ing out to stu­dents us­ing the tech­nol­o­gy avail­able such as What's App, email and Zoom which was al­ready be­ing done."

She said while the min­istry al­so re­spond­ed by launch­ing two on­line plat­forms pro­vid­ing ad­di­tion­al ac­cess to both teach­ers and stu­dents, "We may now have to re­con­sid­er our ap­proach to us­ing tech­nol­o­gy in dif­fer­ent en­vi­ron­ments and across all school lev­els."

Mean­while, for­mer Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh crit­i­cised the lack of a de­fin­i­tive pol­i­cy on the way for­ward as he said, "Dis­cus­sions should have been tak­ing place since the first week of the clo­sure with the 18 de­nom­i­na­tion­al boards, TTUTA and the oth­er sec­ondary school stake­hold­ers. By now, the Min­istry should have for­mu­lat­ed a pol­i­cy."

"As a for­mer Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter, it is to­tal­ly un­sat­is­fac­to­ry and from the per­spec­tive of a stu­dent, you are rob­bing them of a fu­ture and it's un­ac­cept­able and un­par­don­able when you can mit­i­gate against the wide­spread de­fi­cien­cies in the ed­u­ca­tion of the chil­dren, there should be a more sub­stan­tive and pow­er­ful move for­ward in the midst of this pan­dem­ic."


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