Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

New Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Tim Gopeesingh says first on his agen­da is to deal with the vi­o­lent ac­tiv­i­ties and high lev­el of in­dis­ci­pline in schools. Gopeesingh, a for­mer chair­man of the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty was sworn in­to of­fice along with oth­er mem­bers of the new­ly-in­stalled Cab­i­net by Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards yes­ter­day. The swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny was held at Knowsley Build­ing, Queen's Park Sa­van­nah in Port-of-Spain. Gopeesingh who is al­so the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Ca­roni East spoke briefly to the me­dia af­ter the cer­e­mo­ny.

He was one of two MP's who agreed to speak with the me­dia be­fore leav­ing for a Cab­i­net meet­ing. The oth­er was Ch­agua­nas West MP Jack Warn­er, who was giv­en the port­fo­lio of Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port. Gopeesingh said the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry was "a very tough min­istry," and likened it to the Min­istry of Health. He said many peo­ple want­ed him in that min­istry. Gopeesingh is a gy­nae­col­o­gist by aca­d­e­m­ic train­ing. He said he was ho­n­oured and felt very priv­i­leged to have been giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to serve the coun­try "at this lev­el."

He said he hoped to make a dif­fer­ence for the fu­ture gen­er­a­tion "be­cause the fu­ture gen­er­a­tion de­pend up­on a very sound ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem rang­ing from ear­ly child­hood ed­u­ca­tion straight on to ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion." MP for Moru­ga/Table­land Clifton De Coteau, a for­mer prin­ci­pal, will be a min­is­ter in the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry. "My role is to en­sure that first of all, the vi­o­lence and the in­dis­ci­pline in schools are stomped out to car­ry the hu­man re­source ca­pac­i­ty from the ear­ly stage through to the ful­fill­ment at ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion," Gopeesingh said.

"So it's go­ing to be a long and ar­du­ous task. "We want to raise the per­for­mance lev­els of stu­dents from 30 per cent pass rate in sec­ondary schools to 100 per cent and we want to make sure that all schools have tremen­dous dis­ci­pline and the vi­o­lence ought to be stomped out." Asked about De Co­toeau's role, the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter said it would be dis­cussed in Cab­i­net. The promise of free lap­tops to all stu­dents who wrote the Sec­ondary En­trance Ex­am­i­na­tion will be ho­n­oured, Gopeesingh as­sured. He said the promise was made by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and the lap­tops would be de­liv­ered.

Re­spond­ing to the ques­tion of the im­ple­men­ta­tion of sin­gle-sex schools which was a pol­i­cy of the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, Gopeesingh said that was an is­sue which would have to be raised in Cab­i­net. He added there would be many ar­eas to be ex­am­ined to de­ter­mine how to bring male stu­dents up to par with fe­males. "We have to look at the phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties in terms of ex­er­cise and the psy­cho­log­i­cal com­po­nents of young men from teenage years go­ing astray and there­fore we have to bring them back on board," he said.