KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Youths are call­ing for more fund­ing for school re­pairs.

The call comes days af­ter Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert an­nounced that $7.512B will be al­lo­cat­ed to ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing for fis­cal 2025.

As some young peo­ple re­flect­ed on what they hoped to hear in the bud­get as part of the Par­lia­ment’s Youth Bud­get Talks 2024 yes­ter­day, they said there was need for school re­pairs to be com­plet­ed at a faster rate.

Some stu­dents al­so called for in­creased se­cu­ri­ty at schools.

Ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) was al­so a hot top­ic, as some stu­dents said it should be in­te­grat­ed in­to the school sys­tem.

Shar­ing his views on the bud­get state­ment for the 2025 fi­nan­cial year, Na­pari­ma Col­lege stu­dent Syed Ali said he was hap­py for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of e-text books and in­creased wages for their teach­ers, but said more mon­ey should be put in­to com­plet­ing re­pair works for aban­doned school projects.

Ali said, “I would like to com­mend the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance for push­ing for the pro­vi­sion of e-text­books. I think that is a great ini­tia­tive to low­er the cost of phys­i­cal text­books as well as lessen the phys­i­cal load on our stu­dents’ backs. “Al­so, pri­or to Mon­day, one of the things I was hop­ing for was an in­crease for our na­tion’s teach­ers be­cause I was go­ing to say that four per cent isn’t enough. I was very hap­py the ho­n­ourable min­is­ter stat­ed that he will be pro­vid­ing a fur­ther five per cent in­crease for them, and al­so that the Gov­ern­ment will be as­sist­ing in pay­ing off UWI’s debts. My con­cerns, how­ev­er, are that more funds need to be al­lo­cat­ed for the re­pairs of schools as well as the aban­doned schools through­out the coun­try, some of which would have been like 80 per cent com­plet­ed.

“For ex­am­ple, Lafayette Pri­ma­ry School and Re­form Hin­du School, and the list goes on. I wish that some more funds could be al­lo­cat­ed to these aban­doned school projects. There was no men­tion as well of the aban­doned UWI cam­pus in Debe.”

Bish­op Anstey and Trin­i­ty Col­lege East (BATCE) Sixth Form stu­dent J’Zara Adams said she be­lieves AI could help stu­dents.

Adams said, “AI should be in­te­grat­ed in­to our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem. One way I see that be­com­ing an easy in­te­gra­tion is that the min­is­ter would have men­tioned the nu­mer­a­cy pro­gramme, which I think was very im­por­tant be­cause our pass rate for CSEC Math would have de­clined to 42.1 per cent. I think us­ing AI in that nu­mer­a­cy pro­gramme to re­al­ly pin­point ex­act­ly where stu­dents are falling short kind of re­duces that men­tal block that a lot of peo­ple form to­ward math.”

She added, “I do see AI as pos­i­tive. I think say­ing that we shouldn’t utilise AI be­cause it will make us lose jobs is kind of think­ing back­wards. What we’re look­ing at, is that we’re mov­ing to­wards a knowl­edge-based labour in­dus­try. Things that can be au­to­mat­ed, those jobs are be­com­ing more ob­so­lete. This is a pos­i­tive. It means there’s room in our so­ci­ety where we need to build in­no­v­a­tive and crit­i­cal thinkers”

While oth­er young peo­ple said they sup­port­ed the health sec­tor re­ceiv­ing the high­est al­lo­ca­tion in the bud­get, some called for more fo­cus to be placed on men­tal health.