BO­BIE-LEE DIXON

bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardian.co.tt

As Ju­ly 20 nears, the date set by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion for Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) stu­dents to re­turn to school in prepa­ra­tion for this year’s ex­am, some stake­hold­ers in the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor are still con­cerned about the health and safe­ty of both stu­dents and teach­ers.

The SEA ex­am­i­na­tion will be held on Au­gust 20.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with Lance Mot­t­ley, pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Pri­ma­ry Schools Prin­ci­pals As­so­ci­a­tion (NAPSPA), he said the as­so­ci­a­tion knows the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion had been cur­rent­ly dis­trib­ut­ing sani­tis­ing ma­te­ri­als as well as in­stalling sig­nage at the var­i­ous schools in prepa­ra­tion for their re­open­ing.

How­ev­er, the as­so­ci­a­tion was hop­ing it would all be com­plet­ed by the Ju­ly 20 re­open­ing date.

He said an­oth­er con­cern was the com­ple­tion of emer­gency re­pairs to sev­er­al schools be­fore class re­sump­tion.

“I know as well that the Min­istry would have ap­proved for emer­gency re­pairs to be done at schools iden­ti­fied. It may have start­ed. I am not too sure, but I am hop­ing that that too will be com­plet­ed by the time school is sched­uled to be on Mon­day,” said Mot­t­ley.

He added, “As you would know, if these two on­go­ing things—the emer­gency re­pairs as well as the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the im­por­tant ma­te­ri­als—are not in place for those schools that are so iden­ti­fied, then we are go­ing to have some chal­lenges…we are go­ing to have a se­ri­ous prob­lem.”

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion’s (TTUTA) pres­i­dent An­to­nia Tekah-De Fre­itas al­so in a tele­phone in­ter­view shared NAPSPA’S view but al­so had ad­di­tion­al con­cerns.

Tekah-De Fre­itas said TTUTA main­tained its stance on the health and safe­ty of all ed­u­ca­tion­al pro­fes­sion­als, in­clud­ing school su­per­vi­sors and cler­i­cal of­fi­cers apart from teach­ers and prin­ci­pals who would be on school com­pounds at their re­open­ing on Ju­ly 20 and on­wards.

“The health and safe­ty of all these ed­u­ca­tion work­ers and the stu­dents are of para­mount im­por­tance. If we do not have the school prop­er­ly sani­tised, the wa­ter tanks prop­er­ly cleaned and all of the things in place, there would be cause for con­cern,” Tekah-De Fre­itas not­ed.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, she said TTUTA was mon­i­tor­ing the is­sue of pick up and drop-offs of stu­dents by their re­spec­tive sources of trans­porta­tion.

She said some prin­ci­pals were chal­lenged by be­ing able to in­stall ma­te­ri­als such as ad­di­tion­al wash sta­tions be­cause the fund­ing that was ex­pect­ed from the Min­istry was not forth­com­ing and re­sult­ing in prin­ci­pals hav­ing to dip in­to their re­spec­tive school’s fund which was al­ready lim­it­ed to source these ad­di­tion­al ma­te­ri­als.

“So there are con­cerns about in­fra­struc­ture and health and safe­ty is­sues that we are mon­i­tor­ing and we have to see how it goes. We would not be able to pro­nounce on it just yet. We are still hav­ing dis­cus­sions with teach­ers and get­ting feed­back from them.”

Tekah-De Fre­itas said TTUTA was not go­ing to dis­cour­age teach­ers who wished to go out and en­gage the stu­dents, but at the same time, it want­ed to en­sure the health and safe­ty all per­sons would be a pri­or­i­ty at this time.