Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia is dis­miss­ing as “un­true” re­ports that 27 schools re­main closed fol­low­ing the Au­gust 21 earth­quake.

Gar­cia told the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day on­ly five schools re­mained closed and all ef­forts are be­ing made to en­sure that those schools are opened as ear­ly as this week in some in­stances.

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion Lovell Fran­cis, who al­so spoke with the T&T Guardian, said the Guayagua­yare RC School will be opened to­day while class­es at San Juan North will start by to­mor­row and class­es will re­sume at the Bar­rack­pore East and West Sec­ondary Schools by Wednes­day.

Fran­cis said the San­ta Maria RC School will be tem­porar­i­ly moved to his con­stituen­cy of­fice.

Re­pairs are be­ing done to the St Bene­dicts Col­lege to en­sure that teach­ers re­sume du­ty soon and the For­est Re­serve An­gli­can is to be tem­porar­i­ly re­lo­cat­ed.

Fran­cis said most of the schools dam­aged in the earth­quake are in op­er­a­tion and ar­eas “deemed dan­ger­ous” by the Min­istry of Works and OS­HA have been “cor­doned off.”

With re­gard to the St Mary’s Gov­ern­ment School, he said there is a sew­er is­sue and that will be solved by chang­ing the line.

Mean­while, Gar­cia has hailed the suc­cess of the sec­ond year of the Laven­tille/Mor­vant Spe­cial project which he said was in­tend­ed to list the spir­it of stu­dents, par­ents and teach­ers in the Laven­tille-Mor­vant area.

The prize giv­ing was held last Fri­day and Gar­cia said from all in­di­ca­tions “the project has been very suc­cess­ful.”

The min­is­ter said cur­ricu­lum of­fi­cers in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, who have re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for read­ing spe­cial­ists and Math­e­mat­ics, have ex­am­ined stu­dents in the pri­ma­ry schools in the area “and they have re­port­ed an im­prove­ment in stu­dents in both read­ing and Math­e­mat­ics.”

The pro­gramme was al­so used to pro­mote dis­ci­pline and Gar­cia said, “This is the area in which I am most pleased. As a re­sult of this we do not have the high lev­els of in­dis­ci­pline that char­ac­teris­es that area.”

Gar­cia said as part of the ini­tia­tive chil­dren are en­cour­aged to be cat­a­lysts for change.