PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

The de­ci­sions con­cern­ing the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment were made with the best in­ter­est of the na­tion's stu­dents, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion An­tho­ny Gar­cia said Fri­day.

Re­spond­ing in part to some of the back­lash fol­low­ing the Au­gust 20 SEA date and to of­fer teach­ers stipends for the work they will have to do dur­ing their va­ca­tion pe­ri­od, Gar­cia said, "We have to un­der­stand that we are not op­er­at­ing un­der nor­mal cir­cum­stances. This is why we have to hold hands with all our stake­hold­ers and in par­tic­u­lar our prin­ci­pals, our vice-prin­ci­pals and our teach­ers and our par­ents all in the in­ter­est of our chil­dren. We de­liv­er the prod­uct and that prod­uct is a qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion and we have to make sure that we have the to­tal sup­port of all of our stake­hold­ers."

The min­is­ter, who com­ment­ed fol­low­ing a tour of the Ari­ma Cen­tral Sec­ondary, said he had not been in con­tact with TTUTA since the an­nounce­ment but had heard their gen­er­al coun­cil dis­agreed with it.

"I un­der­stand the gen­er­al coun­cil was not in agree­ment with our po­si­tion, but again we have the busi­ness of ed­u­ca­tion to see about and sec­ond­ly we have our chil­dren, both in the pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools, to see about and where ed­u­ca­tion is con­cerned our stu­dents must be giv­en top pri­or­i­ty," Gar­cia said.

He made it clear "that doesn't say that we are ne­glect­ing our teach­ers, our teach­ers are there to fa­cil­i­tate and in an ef­fort to en­sure that our stu­dents re­ceive a high-qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion, we must en­sure that our teach­ers are well tak­en care of too. This is what we have been do­ing."

He al­so ex­plained that not all teach­ers will be re­quired to turn out.

"Those teach­ers that are re­quired to go out to school from the 20th of Ju­ly are the teach­ers who are teach­ing the SEA class­es, so it is on­ly those teach­ers who have been as­signed to the Stan­dard 5 class­es and are teach­ing the SEA stu­dents, those teach­ers are sup­posed to turn out."

How­ev­er, he said all pri­ma­ry school prin­ci­pals will be re­quired to turn out be­cause they have to su­per­vise things to en­sure every­thing goes okay.

The an­nounce­ment that teach­ers will be paid a stipend has been met with harsh crit­i­cism from the Reg­is­tered Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion, which has ar­gued that nurs­es who were the front­line work­ers dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic did not even get haz­ard in­cen­tives.

Gar­cia ad­mit­ted he could not speak for nurs­es but ex­plained the sit­u­a­tions were dif­fer­ent.

"In terms of the nurs­es, there is a fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ence. Where teach­ers are con­cerned it is their va­ca­tion pe­ri­od that we are ask­ing that they turn out.

"I don't know with re­spect to the nurs­es, I don't want to talk on be­half of the nurs­es but all I want to say at this point is it is the teach­ers' va­ca­tion pe­ri­od and we are ask­ing them in the in­ter­est of the stu­dents to turn out dur­ing the va­ca­tion pe­ri­od and we are of­fer­ing then an in­cen­tive," Gar­cia said.