An­na-Lisa Paul

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) has promised to sub­mit a de­tailed doc­u­ment out­lin­ing its de­fin­i­tive po­si­tion on var­i­ous is­sues dur­ing the COVID-19 dis­rup­tion to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion by to­day.

The agree­ment fol­lowed a vir­tu­al meet­ing yes­ter­day in which the two en­ti­ties dis­cussed how the forced clo­sure of ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions will af­fect stake­hold­ers and the ac­tions planned by the Gov­ern­ment to en­sure there is no dis­rup­tion to the learn­ing process.

Yes­ter­day’s meet­ing came a day af­ter Gar­cia an­nounced that it was un­like­ly schools could re­open be­fore the start of the new aca­d­e­m­ic year in Sep­tem­ber, since it was now im­pos­si­ble to meet the ini­tial April 20 date Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley had an­nounced.

Short­ly af­ter the meet­ing, which last­ed just un­der one hour yes­ter­day, TTUTA pres­i­dent An­to­nia Tekah-De Fre­itas said, “The min­is­ter re­it­er­at­ed the po­si­tion in terms of the re­struc­tur­ing of the term and he asked for TTUTA’s po­si­tion, so we shared some ideas and will clar­i­fy our po­si­tion on that at our gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing to­mor­row (to­day) and then sub­mit a doc­u­ment in writ­ing on that mat­ter.

“We ex­pressed con­cerns pre­vi­ous­ly ar­tic­u­lat­ed about ac­cess, con­nec­tiv­i­ty and avail­abil­i­ty of de­vices. Al­so, stu­dent mo­ti­va­tion to join the ICT plat­forms, prepa­ra­tion of work and the sched­ul­ing of ex­ams.”

Tekah-De Fre­itas said Gar­cia in­di­cat­ed, “a will­ing­ness to hold hands with TTUTA on the way for­ward be­cause def­i­nite­ly, af­ter the Cab­i­net takes a de­ci­sion in terms of the use of on­line learn­ing and re­struc­tur­ing of the school term, there will be a need to con­tin­ue dis­cus­sions on the oth­er mat­ters.”

TTUTA’s gen­er­al coun­cil will al­so host a vir­tu­al meet­ing of their mem­bers to­day.

Asked if the two groups dis­cussed the sur­vey to gauge where teach­ers and stu­dents were at in terms of on­line teach­ing and learn­ing which min­istry of­fi­cials had pro­posed, Tekah-De Fre­itas said, “The mat­ter was raised about teach­ers’ in­ter­ac­tion with the on­line plat­form and teach­ers’ per­for­mance of du­ties dur­ing that pe­ri­od from April 20th on­ward, and I would want to leave that right now at the point where the gen­er­al coun­cil of TTUTA will make a de­ci­sion on that to­mor­row (to­day).”

Gar­cia lat­er con­firmed that TTUTA would sub­mit their po­si­tion in writ­ing.

On Tues­day, the min­is­ter in­di­cat­ed that he would be tak­ing a note to the Cab­i­net to­day which would con­tain rec­om­men­da­tions for the re­main­der of the aca­d­e­m­ic school year 2019/2020 and al­so for the next aca­d­e­m­ic year 2020/2021.

As a re­sult of the sud­den clo­sure of schools, stu­dents were un­able to com­plete term two of the aca­d­e­m­ic year 2019/2020 and as lo­cal COVID-19 re­sponse mech­a­nisms re­main in place, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of term three be­ing lost al­so looms. If a Sep­tem­ber start is al­so not pos­si­ble, Gar­cia has pro­posed a start of the new aca­d­e­m­ic year from Jan­u­ary 2021, with three terms com­pressed in­to two span­ning Jan­u­ary to June 2021.