St George’s Col­lege will be tem­porar­i­ly re­lo­cat­ed to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s (UTT) Val­sayn Cam­pus soon to fa­cil­i­tate an­tic­i­pat­ed ex­ten­sive re­pairs to its school’s build­ing in Barataria, the T&T Guardian has learnt.

Phys­i­cal class­es at St George’s were sus­pend­ed ear­li­er this month af­ter the school’s ceil­ing col­lapsed as a re­sult of heavy rain.

No one was in­jured dur­ing the in­ci­dent but as a pre­cau­tion class­es have since been con­duct­ed on­line.

In a memo from the Chief Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer last Fri­day to St George’s prin­ci­pal Dr Asha Ram­raj-Sookdeo it not­ed that plans are be­ing put in place to have the school re­lo­cat­ed to the UTT cam­pus from this week.

“The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion ex­tends its heart­felt thanks to you for your un­der­stand­ing as it fa­cil­i­tat­ed the tem­po­rary re­lo­ca­tion of St George’s Col­lege to The Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT) Val­sayn Cam­pus, Spring Vil­lage, Val­sayn, due to the an­tic­i­pat­ed ex­ten­sive re­pairs to the school build­ing,” it stat­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry, arrange­ments are be­ing fi­nalised for the stu­dents to oc­cu­py the UTT Val­sayn cam­pus by this Fri­day (Oc­to­ber 28).

The min­istry stat­ed that it is cur­rent­ly re­lo­cat­ing fur­ni­ture, as­sign­ing class­es, and sani­tis­ing the UTT cam­pus to en­sure the tem­po­rary re­lo­ca­tion can take place.

Speak­ing dur­ing a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) po­lit­i­cal meet­ing re­cent­ly Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly stat­ed that over 300 of this coun­try’s 800 schools are over 40 years old and are in need of in­fra­struc­tur­al work.

St George’s, this coun­try’s first mixed gen­der sec­ondary school, is sched­uled to cel­e­brate its 70th an­niver­sary next year.

Gads­by-Dol­ly stat­ed that school in­fra­struc­ture is ex­pect­ed to take a sig­nif­i­cant chunk of this year’s bud­get al­lo­ca­tion.

That “sig­nif­i­cant chunk” Gads­by-Dol­ly val­ued at $165 mil­lion.

She said more would be sourced from the Fi­nance Min­istry if nec­es­sary.

“Think of your own home, think of how many things go wrong in your home every day, a pipe burst, a gut­ter­ing falling down, so mul­ti­ply that by 800 and think of the fact that it is school chil­dren run­ning through these build­ings and un­der­stand that this is al­ways go­ing to be a chal­lenge and some­thing we have to spend sig­nif­i­cant funds on,” she stat­ed.