An­na-Lisa Paul

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) says teach­ers will be out in or­der to com­ply with the in­struc­tion by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion (MoE) for all stu­dents in Forms Four to Six to re­turn to school from Mon­day.

How­ev­er, the union quick­ly not­ed that it is the min­istry’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­vide safe spaces for them to op­er­ate in with the COVID-19 virus still a ma­jor is­sue con­cern­ing the op­er­a­tion of schools.

Com­ment­ing on the is­sue yes­ter­day, TTUTA pres­i­dent An­to­nia Tekah-De Fre­itas said she was pleased, how­ev­er, that the min­istry had tak­en one of their main rec­om­men­da­tions on board.

“The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion was asked by TTUTA to choose one modal­i­ty for cur­ricu­lum de­liv­ery and that is what they did,” she said, not­ing that they will now on­ly be teach­ing Forms 4-6 stu­dents in per­son, as op­posed to be­ing asked to do both in-per­son and on­line teach­ing.

Both vac­ci­nat­ed and un­vac­ci­nat­ed stu­dents have been man­dat­ed to re­turn to class­rooms from Oc­to­ber 25—as on­line ses­sions will be dis­con­tin­ued for this co­hort of stu­dents.

Tekah-De Fre­itas in­di­cat­ed yes­ter­day that their mem­bers will ac­qui­esce to the lat­est pol­i­cy de­ci­sion.

“This re­quires the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to en­sure that all safe­ty mech­a­nisms are in place through­out all schools,” she said.

She claimed teach­ers were now fol­low­ing in­struc­tions, which she not­ed is what they are sup­posed to do.

“We are safe-guard­ing their in­ter­ests by mak­ing sure that they go to do the jobs they have been in­struct­ed to. The min­istry has to treat with stu­dents oth­er­wise.”

When the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion restart­ed in-per­son class­es for Forms 4-6 stu­dents on Oc­to­ber 4, on­ly vac­ci­nat­ed stu­dents were al­lowed to re­turn to class­rooms, while un­vac­ci­nat­ed stu­dents were told they would re­main en­gaged in vir­tu­al learn­ing.

The de­ci­sion was heav­i­ly crit­i­cised by TTUTA and the Con­cerned Par­ents Move­ment of TT (CPMTT), who called on the min­istry to re­vis­it this plan.

Yes­ter­day, Tekah-De Fre­itas said TTUTA was in­sis­tent on one modal­i­ty for teach­ing, as this would re­duce the bur­den on teach­ers who had been forced to con­duct face-to-face class­es, pre­pare on­line ses­sions and al­so com­pile pack­ages for stu­dents with­out de­vices and/or in­ter­net con­nec­tiv­i­ty.

Both the CPMTT and the Na­tion­al Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) had pre­vi­ous­ly ex­pressed sat­is­fac­tion with the di­rec­tive to re­turn to in-per­son class­es for the stu­dent co­hort from Mon­day.

In­di­cat­ing that both vac­ci­nat­ed and un­vac­ci­nat­ed teach­ers had been en­gag­ing in face-to-face ses­sions with on­ly vac­ci­nat­ed stu­dents be­fore, CPMTT pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer Shami­la Ra­heem yes­ter­day said, “Now, it’s re­al­ly just to get un­vac­ci­nat­ed stu­dents back in­to class­rooms as part of the equa­tion.”

She re­vealed that stake­hold­ers had ini­tial­ly pro­posed to the min­istry that stu­dents be al­lowed to re­main on­line for the re­main­der of 2021, “be­cause of the whole so­cial dis­tanc­ing re­quire­ment.”

Ra­heem said the sug­ges­tion was due large­ly in part to the fact that some schools can­not ad­e­quate­ly ac­com­mo­date all their stu­dents when this is fac­tored in due to space con­straints.

She ad­mit­ted, how­ev­er, that the re­turn to school di­rec­tive for Forms 4-6 stu­dents had tak­en par­ents by sur­prise, and they were now scam­per­ing to buy uni­forms, shoes, books and sta­tionery for Mon­day. She said con­cerns had now arisen as to whether the Na­tion­al School Feed­ing Pro­gramme and the Pri­vate School Trans­port Op­er­a­tors would al­so be re­sum­ing op­er­a­tions.

Ra­heem said she had hoped a lit­tle more thought had gone in­to the plan­ning for the re­open­ing.

“It came across a lit­tle hasty.”

How­ev­er, she added, “We just want­ed the seg­re­ga­tion to stop.”

Ra­heem said some prin­ci­pals have al­so now ex­pressed con­cerns that if, due to space con­straints, a shift sys­tem has to be ef­fect­ed in Jan­u­ary, when Forms One to Three stu­dents are ex­pect­ed to be brought back out, it could mean that the school syl­labus would take longer to com­plete.

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day about TTUTA’s an­nounce­ment, in­ter­im NPTA pres­i­dent Zena Ra­matali said, “We are pleased to know that all our chil­dren will be taught, as our po­si­tion re­mains ed­u­ca­tion for all as long as all health pro­to­cols are put in place and fol­lowed to the ut­most.

“We are al­so stat­ing that chil­dren and par­ents should con­tin­ue to be ed­u­cat­ed to re­main vig­i­lant against this pan­dem­ic.”