With just months to go un­til the Caribbean Sec­ondary Ex­am­i­na­tion Cer­tifi­cate (CSEC) is held, stu­dents of the Point Fortin East Sec­ondary School are con­cerned about the lev­el of their pre­pared­ness af­ter the school was closed yes­ter­day.

Frus­trat­ed and wor­ried, stu­dents and their par­ents trekked sev­er­al kilo­me­tres from their school to the Point Fortin Con­stituen­cy Of­fice, hop­ing their MP Ed­mund Dil­lon could pro­vide some an­swers.

PTA pres­i­dent Ta­fara Lewis said they were not giv­en any no­tice from the school or the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

Dil­lon even­tu­al­ly met with the par­ents, telling them that he vis­it­ed the school to see what was tak­ing place.

It’s al­ready been three weeks since the stu­dents have not had prop­er class­es. Sev­er­al blocks were cor­doned off be­cause of cracks in the in­fra­struc­ture, faulty elec­tri­cal fix­ture and leaky plumb­ing.

Form 5 stu­dent Afri­ka Lewis said teach­ers are try­ing to keep stu­dents up to date with the syl­labus by send­ing work via What­sApp. How­ev­er, Afri­ka said not every­one has in­ter­net at home. School-Based As­sess­ments are due be­fore Car­ni­val and stu­dents don’t have ac­cess to the lab­o­ra­to­ries.

“It is af­fect­ing us very much be­cause we have SBAs, we have labs and it is im­pos­si­ble for us to do labs. It is im­pos­si­ble to do a lab at home be­cause we do not have the ma­te­ri­als and ap­pa­ra­tus­es to do it. SBAs are due be­fore Car­ni­val. The teach­ers are try­ing to get all the work sent via What­sApp but not every­body has in­ter­net so it is hard­er on us and it is putting a strain on us to do it,” Lewis said.

As par­ents and teach­ers gath­ered out­side the school, con­struc­tion work­ers were seen en­ter­ing.

Since 2018, re­pairs were or­dered by the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Agency (OS­HA). But lit­tle was done un­til two weeks ago when Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Lovell Fran­cis vis­it­ed.

Lewis said par­ents on­ly learned about the clo­sure af­ter some­one in­formed a mem­ber of the Na­tion­al Par­ents Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion on Mon­day.

“This is why we are here this morn­ing: to get in­for­ma­tion and to get some an­swers from the prin­ci­pal, school su­per­vi­sor, the DSS, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion. We need in­for­ma­tion be­cause you are not pass­ing down any,” she said.

In a me­dia re­lease, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion said it did not shut down the school, but on­ly sus­pend­ed class­es from yes­ter­day to Fri­day. It stat­ed that the school was is­sued three Pro­hi­bi­tion No­tices and two Im­prove­ment No­tices by OS­HA. The Min­istry then con­tact­ed the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port to as­sess the build­ings and cracks in the build­ings were found to be non-struc­tur­al and re­pairable.

“In­fra­struc­tur­al works at the school are near com­ple­tion and the Min­istry is cur­rent­ly work­ing on hav­ing the OS­HA no­tices lift­ed as well as hav­ing the elec­tri­cal re­pairs com­plet­ed by Feb­ru­ary 8 to fa­cil­i­tate re­open­ing by Feb­ru­ary 10,” the re­lease stat­ed.