An­na-Lisa Paul

Send your chil­dren to school to­mor­row!

Is­su­ing this edict as she ad­dressed a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) meet­ing at the San Juan Laven­tille Com­pos­ite Sec­ondary School on Sat­ur­day, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said while they could not pro­vide any guar­an­tees to par­ents to as­suage their fears re­gard­ing their chil­dren’s health, they can rest as­sured that every pos­si­ble ef­fort has been made to en­sure the phys­i­cal safe­ty of stu­dents as they re­turn to phys­i­cal school­ing.

In­di­cat­ing that T&T was ready for the chal­lenge as it stood, “On the cusp of a re­turn to school for many of our chil­dren,” the min­is­ter ad­mit­ted, “It will not be easy.”

Gads­by-Dol­ly said while it was the Gov­ern­ment’s main pri­or­i­ty to keep cit­i­zens safe, they al­so had an oblig­a­tion to stu­dents to, “pro­vide the best chance for ed­u­ca­tion­al suc­cess and per­son­al de­vel­op­ment.”

Claim­ing school was that area where they learned to live, the min­is­ter said, “We want to keep them alive. We don’t want them to live like plants in our home.”

In­stead, she said it was the Gov­ern­ment’s fer­vent wish to see them thrive as they in­ter­act­ed and de­vel­oped in­to pos­i­tive and con­tribut­ing cit­i­zens, whilst en­sur­ing they were safe and healthy.

Gads­by-Dol­ly re­vealed that be­tween 2019 and 2021, the Gov­ern­ment had spent more than $800 mil­lion on ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion via the Gov­ern­ment As­sist­ed Tu­ition Ex­pens­es (GATE) pro­gramme for stu­dents at­tend­ing in­sti­tu­tions such as COSTAATT, UWI, UTT, NESC, MIC, YTEPP, USC and ROYTEC.

She said, “That is where the bulk of the mon­ey was spent.”

Claim­ing that over 35,000 peo­ple per year had ben­e­fit­ted, she con­tin­ued, “Even in the height of the pan­dem­ic when safe­ty is such an im­por­tant is­sue, we are spend­ing that to en­sure our cit­i­zens can still progress ed­u­ca­tion­al­ly.”

De­clar­ing it crit­i­cal that stu­dents had to get back to school af­ter two years in the pan­dem­ic, the min­is­ter ques­tioned their role as fu­ture lead­ers, “What hap­pens in 15 years? What hap­pens in 20 years? Where do we get the cadre of our lead­ers from? Will they be prop­er­ly pre­pared for what re­spon­si­bil­i­ty they will have to shoul­der at that time?”

Ad­dress­ing those par­ents who were ques­tion­ing why their chil­dren were be­ing made to re­turn to the phys­i­cal class­room as they were per­form­ing well at home, Gads­by-Dol­ly said, “For each child that is per­form­ing well on­line in the aca­d­e­m­ic sense, there are a pletho­ra of oth­er chil­dren who are not.”

She in­di­cat­ed, “As a gov­ern­ment, our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is to all of our chil­dren in T&T, not just some.”

Shar­ing stan­dard­ised test re­sults for ex­ams such as SEA, CAPE and CSEC, the min­is­ter ex­plained just how these scores re­flect­ed the ad­verse im­pact that be­ing out of school was hav­ing on some stu­dents.

In 2021, 47 per cent of the stu­dents that wrote CSEC in T&T got their full cer­tifi­cate, which in­clud­ed Math and Eng­lish Lan­guage.

Com­par­ing this to the 2020 fig­ure of 55 per cent, Gads­by-Dol­ly stat­ed, “That 47 per cent has been the low­est in five years in T&T.”

At the SEA in 2021, six per cent more chil­dren scored less than 30 per cent; while nine per cent more chil­dren scored less than 50 per cent.

This grave de­vel­op­ment meant, “More chil­dren scored less than the pass mark in SEA,” she replied.

Two per cent more chil­dren scored greater than 90 per cent.

De­clar­ing, “We had many more chil­dren do­ing worse than they did in 2020,” the min­is­ter said 48 per cent of stu­dents were scor­ing less than 50 per cent in SEA, which meant that 50 per cent of sec­ondary schools were re­ceiv­ing more than 75 per cent of chil­dren who did not pass SEA.

Ad­mit­ting the prob­lems did not start on­ly in 2019, she said, “What the pan­dem­ic did was ex­ac­er­bate what was al­ready a crit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion.”

In­di­cat­ing that the Gov­ern­ment had to take up the chal­lenge and get the na­tion’s chil­dren the best ed­u­ca­tion pos­si­ble, Gads­by-Dol­ly said they have done every­thing to min­imise the risk to stu­dents as they come back to school.

Forms One to Three are sched­uled to re­turn to in-per­son class­es to­mor­row.

Sec­ondary school stu­dents in Forms Four to Six re­turned to phys­i­cal class­es on Oc­to­ber 4, 2021.

On­ly vac­ci­nat­ed stu­dents were brought back out in the first in­stance on Oc­to­ber 4, 2021.