Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA), Mar­tin Lum Kin, says there are many things the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry still needs to ad­dress and im­prove, as the sec­ond school term for the cur­rent aca­d­e­m­ic year comes to an end.

The sec­ond school term end­ed on Fri­day, March 22, 2024.

Speak­ing on CNC3's The Morn­ing Brew show on Mon­day, Lum Kin said there are sev­er­al health and safe­ty is­sues the min­istry still needs to ad­dress.

Point­ing the vi­o­lence and in­dis­ci­pline, re­cent bomb threats, and gen­er­al in­fra­struc­tur­al is­sues with many schools, the TTUTA pres­i­dent ob­serves that teach­ers are do­ing their ut­most to get the job done, de­spite these chal­lenges.

“We have SBAs com­ing up for our sec­ondary school teach­ers; they are en­gaged in that too. CSEC and CAPE are al­so com­ing up.  With­in this term we had the prepa­ra­tion for SEA,” he points out.

“There are a myr­i­ad num­ber of is­sues that our schools face and which chal­lenge our ed­u­ca­tors in de­liv­ery of cur­ricu­lum, and in terms of prop­er health and safe­ty, and prop­er in­fra­struc­ture, as well as re­sources,” he added. 

Mar­tin Lum Kin made a spe­cial ap­peal for more re­sources for the Stu­dents Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion (SSSD).

“They are un­der­staffed and un­der-re­sourced,” he as­serts. “For them to do their job, and to do it ef­fec­tive­ly, they need to have more re­sources.”

Lum Kin told Guardian Me­dia that the last TTUTA had heard on the en­rol­ment of mi­grant chil­dren, was that the spe­cif­ic and con­nect­ed leg­is­la­tion were still at the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice.

As far as he is con­cerned, more at­ten­tion should be paid to this is­sue and these chil­dren’s fu­tures.

“We see these bits of leg­is­la­tion as im­por­tant and that need to be ad­dressed,” the TTUTA pres­i­dent said.  “In our es­ti­ma­tion, the Gov­ern­ment’s leg­isla­tive agen­da should have that as a top pri­or­i­ty.”

Mar­tin Lum Kin al­so not­ed that teach­ers would need ad­di­tion­al train­ing and re­sources to en­sure that they can im­part knowl­edge and the cur­ricu­lum ef­fec­tive­ly to stu­dents from a mi­grant back­ground, who may not have Eng­lish as a sec­ond lan­guage, and need that ex­tra sup­port.