Our na­tion’s chil­dren have been locked out of phys­i­cal school for the past year and a half. Re­sum­ing face-to-face teach­ing was nev­er go­ing to be an easy task but the Gov­ern­ment’s lethar­gic ap­proach has fur­ther deep­ened our cur­rent ed­u­ca­tion cri­sis. The new school term is sched­uled to start vir­tu­al­ly to­mor­row and the Prime Min­is­ter has pro­posed to re­sume phys­i­cal school in Oc­to­ber 2021 based on the COVID-19 vac­cine up­take. Mean­while, the Gov­ern­ment has failed to pro­vide time­ly up­dates to par­ents, stu­dents and teach­ers on the planned school safe­ty mea­sures, ca­pac­i­ty re­stric­tions to be in­tro­duced for schools, arrange­ments for pub­lic school trans­porta­tion, and pos­si­ble school timetable ad­just­ments to re­duce school pop­u­la­tion den­si­ties.

Busi­ness­es face a sim­i­lar chal­lenge every week with fren­zied gov­ern­ment-im­posed vi­cis­si­tudes, some­times with­out the cour­tesy of a 24-hour warn­ing. The phrase, “As of mid­night tonight” has be­come a na­tion­al meme but points to the Gov­ern­ment’s flip­pant dis­re­gard for peo­ple’s time, which in turn cre­ates un­cer­tain­ty and chaos for cit­i­zens who have to plan their lives and liveli­hoods around press con­fer­ences.

The Prime Min­is­ter has pitched the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a par­al­lel ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem that will re­strict ac­cess to vac­ci­nat­ed stu­dents at phys­i­cal school. The Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion is on record say­ing that on­line learn­ing is no sub­sti­tute for face-to-face learn­ing. The in­tro­duc­tion of a par­al­lel ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem will cre­ate in­equities in learn­ing, plac­ing the vac­ci­nat­ed at an un­fair ad­van­tage. The pro­pos­al is ill-ad­vised and de­fies the Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goal of pro­mot­ing in­clu­sive and qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion for all. Since March 2020, stu­dent dropouts have in­creased be­cause of the dig­i­tal di­vide and the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has failed to pro­vide eq­ui­table ac­cess to all stu­dents to learn re­mote­ly.

The FDA has ex­tend­ed the Pfiz­er-BioN­Tech COVID-19 vac­cine for emer­gency use au­tho­ri­sa­tion (EUA) to in­clude ado­les­cents 12 years and above but this should not be used as a cri­te­ri­on to de­ny stu­dents ac­cess to face-to-face learn­ing. I have per­son­al­ly tak­en my grand­daugh­ter to get vac­ci­nat­ed but the choice of vac­ci­na­tion must be care­ful­ly weighed by each par­ent and stu­dent at the in­di­vid­ual lev­el. I ob­ject to forced COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tions, es­pe­cial­ly among ado­les­cents. Giv­en the re­al­i­ty of vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy among par­ents and teach­ers, con­sid­er­a­tion must be giv­en to non-phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­ter­ven­tions as a mat­ter of pri­or­i­ty be­fore the re­open­ing of schools for face-to-face learn­ing.

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has pre­pared Draft Guide­lines for the Re­open­ing of Schools (Sep­tem­ber 2021) but there are many unan­swered ques­tions that gives the im­pres­sion that the Gov­ern­ment has adopt­ed a lais­sez-faire pos­ture re­gard­ing the safe­ty of our stu­dents, teach­ers and an­cil­lary school staff. Will schools be al­lo­cat­ed more fund­ing for sani­ti­sa­tion? Have me­chan­i­cal, elec­tri­cal and plumb­ing sys­tems at schools been brought up to stan­dard dur­ing the down­time? Did the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion de­vel­op a pro­gramme to ed­u­cate young chil­dren on the need to wear masks through­out the school day?

The coro­n­avirus vari­ants are much more vir­u­lent and the Delta vari­ant has been de­tect­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go. The Eu­ro­pean Cen­tre for Dis­ease Pre­ven­tion and Con­trol re­ports that chil­dren (be­tween the ages of one and 18) are sus­cep­ti­ble to and can trans­mit the coro­n­avirus al­though at a low­er risk of oc­cur­rence rel­a­tive to oth­er age groups and al­so a low­er risk of se­ri­ous health ef­fects com­pared to all oth­er age groups. How­ev­er, the cen­tre al­so states that school clo­sures should be a last re­sort giv­en the neg­a­tive phys­i­cal, men­tal and ed­u­ca­tion­al ef­fects on stu­dent de­vel­op­ment, as well as the eco­nom­ic costs to so­ci­ety.

Mean­ing­ful di­a­logue need­ed

Schools should be re­opened but on­ly based on mean­ing­ful di­a­logue with health of­fi­cials, TTUTA, ed­u­ca­tors, par­ents and stu­dents to es­tab­lish com­pre­hen­sive strate­gies to mit­i­gate school-based trans­mis­sion. The World Bank rec­om­mends mask­ing, so­cial dis­tanc­ing and ven­ti­la­tion as key non-phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­ter­ven­tions to mit­i­gate the risk of trans­mis­sion in a school set­ting.

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has adopt­ed the CDC guide­line which man­dates mask-wear­ing for chil­dren above the age of eight, and “as far as pos­si­ble” for chil­dren be­tween the ages of three and eight. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion is silent on its guid­ance to teach­ers and par­ents on the pro­to­cols for stu­dents who do not com­ply with mask-wear­ing. Will an eight-year-old stu­dent who mis­places his or her mask dur­ing school be re­ferred to the po­lice and charged for breach­ing the pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions or has a more prag­mat­ic ap­proach been con­sid­ered to con­tin­u­al­ly ed­u­cate chil­dren, es­pe­cial­ly among pri­ma­ry school stu­dents, on the im­por­tance of mask-wear­ing? Will schools have a sup­ply of re­place­ment masks to cater for mis­placed or dam­aged masks–a like­ly oc­cur­rence among young chil­dren and teenagers? Has an ed­u­ca­tion cam­paign been de­signed to re­ject bul­ly­ing of stu­dents who are le­git­i­mate­ly un­able to wear masks be­cause of res­pi­ra­to­ry ail­ments, phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ties or cog­ni­tive im­pair­ments? These ques­tions and more oc­cu­py the minds of par­ents, teach­ers and prin­ci­pals.

The WHO rec­om­mends main­tain­ing a phys­i­cal dis­tance of at least one me­tre (es­ti­mat­ed three feet) apart. The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has adopt­ed a six-foot (head-to-head) phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing guide­line but fails to ad­dress one-di­rec­tion­al cor­ri­dors and walk­ways to re­duce stu­dent-to-stu­dent prox­im­i­ty along cir­cu­la­tion routes. The guide­lines from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion al­so fail to treat with up­per sec­ondary school stu­dents (Forms 4, 5 and 6) who al­ter­nate class­es based on sub­ject-spe­cif­ic timeta­bles as op­posed to the co­hort ap­proach for low­er sec­ondary school stu­dents.

Con­tact trac­ing is chal­lenged in this sce­nario if a stu­dent con­tracts the coro­n­avirus. The World Bank al­so rec­om­mends the stag­ger­ing of ar­rival and dis­missal school times or des­ig­nat­ing grade-spe­cif­ic en­trances and ex­its to avoid con­gre­ga­tion and po­ten­tial su­per­spread­er events but this has not been dis­cussed at the na­tion­al lev­el. These con­cerns should have been fi­nalised well in ad­vance of the new school term.

The in­tro­duc­tion of phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing pro­to­cols will nat­u­ral­ly re­duce class sizes and stu­dent pop­u­la­tion den­si­ties but ven­ti­la­tion is still a crit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tion. Both the WHO and CDC rec­om­mend us­ing HVAC sys­tems at max­i­mum out­side air­flow for two hours be­fore and af­ter school is oc­cu­pied. Fil­ters are to be ap­pro­pri­ate­ly sized, in­stalled, cleaned and re­placed on a rou­tine ba­sis to re­duce the risk of re­cir­cu­la­tion of vi­ral par­ti­cles. The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion guide­lines state that air con­di­tion­ing units must be in good work­ing or­der in schools that do not al­low for the flow of nat­ur­al air. No stan­dards are de­fined for fil­ters or even what is deemed good work­ing or­der for air con­di­tion­ing units. Has the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion in­spect­ed and fund­ed im­prove­ments to ven­ti­la­tion sys­tems at schools? Giv­en the rec­om­mend­ed use of nat­ur­al air­flow for spaces, has the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion fund­ed schools to pro­cure child-safe fans?

All stake­hold­ers must work to­geth­er to min­imise school-based trans­mis­sion of the coro­n­avirus. How­ev­er, the Gov­ern­ment as­sumes an im­por­tant role in al­lo­cat­ing fund­ing, pol­i­cy di­rec­tion and set­ting stan­dards for schools. Giv­en the im­passe on vac­ci­na­tion up­take among stu­dents and teach­ers, non-phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­ter­ven­tions must al­so be pri­ori­tised.

The ex­ist­ing guide­lines for the re­open­ing of phys­i­cal schools are wel­comed but are shame­ful­ly in­com­plete. This is to­tal­ly un­ac­cept­able from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion af­ter near­ly 18 months. The safe­ty of stu­dents, teach­ers, an­cil­lary school staff and their fam­i­lies must not be com­pro­mised be­cause of the fail­ure of the Gov­ern­ment to do its home­work.

Fazal Karim

For­mer min­is­ter of ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion and skills train­ing and for­mer MP for Ch­agua­nas East