Come Sep­tem­ber 4, pri­ma­ry schools will look a bit dif­fer­ent, as Venezue­lan mi­grant chil­dren are ex­pect­ed to be in­te­grat­ed in­to class­rooms. How­ev­er, with less than two weeks un­til the new school year be­gins, there is still no con­fir­ma­tion from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion (MoE) as to the pre­pared­ness of schools or how many Venezue­lan mi­grant chil­dren will en­ter the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.

This fol­lows an an­nounce­ment from For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne back in Ju­ly, that the Gov­ern­ment was ad­vanc­ing pol­i­cy to in­te­grate Venezue­lan mi­grant chil­dren in­to the pri­ma­ry school sys­tem.

How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (CEO) of the Catholic Ed­u­ca­tion Board of Man­age­ment (CEBM) Sharon Man­groo, on­ly chil­dren who pass an Eng­lish as­sess­ment fa­cil­i­tat­ed by the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, (the UWI) and whose par­ents re­ceived a per­mit from the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, will be al­lowed in schools.

As such, she said on­ly a small per­cent­age of mi­grant chil­dren cur­rent­ly meet these cri­te­ria.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia via phone yes­ter­day, Man­groo said a to­tal of 17 Catholic schools are pre­pared to ac­cept Venezue­lan mi­grant chil­dren in Sep­tem­ber.

She said the CEBM met with the MoE on two oc­ca­sions since Browne’s an­nounce­ment and prepa­ra­tions are tak­ing place.
She said teach­ers have al­ready re­ceived train­ing and are ready for the new school term.

Man­groo added that the MoE al­so pro­vid­ed re­sources in­clud­ing fur­ni­ture to schools to ac­com­mo­date the chil­dren.

“We’re talk­ing about tak­ing a few chil­dren at a time. Most of them (schools) are go­ing to be tak­ing about four or five chil­dren, that’s it. It might be one child in Stan­dard One, one child in Stan­dard Two, and so on. It’s not a lot of chil­dren, so they’re not go­ing to be over­whelmed,” she ex­plained.

Man­groo added that at present, the chil­dren list­ed for en­roll­ment pend­ing the min­istry’s ap­proval were once part of the Liv­ing Wa­ter Com­mu­ni­ty’s in­for­mal ed­u­ca­tion pro­gramme called Equal Place, since 2019.

But Hu­man Rights ac­tivist Sophia Figueroa-Leon is not hap­py with the in­take of Venezue­lan mi­grant chil­dren in­to the pri­ma­ry school sys­tem.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, she said there are about one thou­sand chil­dren be­tween the ages of five and 13 who should be in school.
She added that many peo­ple are not even aware of the cri­te­ria for en­roll­ment and she does not be­lieve it is fair.

“It seems as though this ad­min­is­tra­tion is try­ing to make it hard­er for the refugees to ac­cess ed­u­ca­tion which is a hu­man rights vi­o­la­tion...This ad­min­is­tra­tion needs to come clean on how many chil­dren they are pre­pared to ac­cept on the day the new school year be­gins,” she said.

Mean­while, oth­er de­nom­i­na­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion boards are will­ing to ac­com­mo­date Venezue­lan mi­grant chil­dren.
How­ev­er, of­fi­cials said they are not get­ting any help from the min­istry to do so.

Chair­man of the An­gli­can Ed­u­ca­tion Board of Man­age­ment (AEBM) Pe­ter Thomas said the min­istry has been mum on pro­vid­ing re­sources to its schools.
Sim­i­lar­ly, Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha Vi­jay Ma­haraj said the board would like to have at least one Span­ish-speak­ing teacher on board to teach Venezue­lan mi­grant chil­dren.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Min­is­ter Browne for com­ment yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, he di­rect­ed us to the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry, which he said had the lead on the mat­ter.

Ef­forts to speak with Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly were fu­tile.