The Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry had dis­bursed al­most $8 mil­lion ($7,848,000) in book grants to 7,848 stu­dents as of yes­ter­day.

This was dis­closed by the min­istry’s Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary, Jacque­line Charles, at a me­dia con­fer­ence at the min­istry’s St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain head of­fice yes­ter­day.

The PS al­so by the end of to­day, the sec­ond in­stal­ment of pay­ments to­talling $9.017 mil­lion will be dis­bursed to 9,017 stu­dents.

The to­tal dis­burse­ment in two in­stal­ments will be $16.865 mil­lion to sup­port 16,865 stu­dents. The fi­nal pay­ment of $3.135 mil­lion will be made by Au­gust 23.

The $1,000 grant was of­fered to house­holds with an in­come of $10,000 or less to as­sist par­ents with ex­pens­es for school items. It was an­nounced when the 2023/2024 bud­get was read last year.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert ini­tial­ly pro­ject­ed that it could cost $65 mil­lion to help 65,000 fam­i­lies. How­ev­er, the fig­ure was ac­tu­al­ly $20 mil­lion.

MoE mum on time­ly
com­ple­tion of school re­pairs

Mean­while, the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry has re­mained tight-lipped about whether re­pairs will be com­plet­ed in all schools in time for the up­com­ing school term.

Un­der the MoE’s purview, there are 143 Ear­ly Child­hood Care and Ed­u­ca­tion­al Cen­tres, of which five per cent are past their de­sign life, which means they are old­er than 50 years. There are al­so 451 pri­ma­ry schools, 51 per cent of which are past their de­sign life; 128 sec­ondary schools, of which 39 per cent have passed their de­sign life; and 10 spe­cial schools.

Min­istry of­fi­cials ad­mit­ted that it has fall­en be­hind, as some fa­cil­i­ties meant to be re­paired in the last fis­cal year were pushed in­to this new fis­cal year.

From Oc­to­ber 2023 to date, the Ju­ly/Au­gust Crit­i­cal Re­pair Pro­gramme com­menced to a tune of $17 mil­lion for phase one. Phase two should be­gin short­ly. It was al­so dis­closed that crit­i­cal re­pairs on 27 schools are 50 per cent com­plet­ed for $171 mil­lion.

How­ev­er, the min­istry did not dis­close whether these schools will be ready for stu­dents come Sep­tem­ber.

“We can say all schools are ready and on the night be­fore school opens a sew­er sys­tem goes down, a pipe bursts, and that would make that school not ready to open. So, we do not re­duce it in those terms. At this time, we are com­plet­ing the works that we are able to that will ad­dress crit­i­cal mat­ters in the schools that have been ad­dressed,” Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said in re­sponse to ques­tions on the readi­ness of schools for the new aca­d­e­m­ic year.

She said they did not have the $2 bil­lion in fund­ing to re­pair all schools and are there­fore pri­ori­tis­ing schools based on what is most crit­i­cal.