Stand­ing six feet apart from one an­oth­er, and hold­ing signs, around 500 peo­ple called for the Gov­ern­ment to open schools dur­ing a silent protest at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, on Mon­day af­ter­noon. The pro­test­ers, rep­re­sent­ing the group Open Schools TT, were com­prised of par­ents and grand­par­ents from all parts of the coun­try.

Some of the signs read: Child­hood De­vel­op­ment in Jeop­ardy, Re­mote Learn­ing is Not an Ed­u­ca­tion and 600 Days and Count­ing.

“We have been try­ing to let the Gov­ern­ment un­der­stand for the last three months. We’ve been par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned with the pri­ma­ry school lev­el, day­cares and pre-schools. There’s been no plan,” Lara Lit­tlepage, a mem­ber of the Open Schools TT com­mit­tee, said.

“What are we wait­ing for? COVID is here to stay and the Prime Min­is­ter keeps say­ing that. We’ve been talk­ing about every­thing else ex­cept our stu­dents. Stu­dents haven’t had a chance to speak their side and they are suf­fer­ing.”

Lit­tlepage said the or­gan­i­sa­tion is seek­ing an au­di­ence with the Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh and Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly to dis­cuss a way for­ward. She be­lieves that while vary­ing stake­hold­ers have had the chance to have their say dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, par­ents have not.

“We are okay with a phased open­ing. We are not ask­ing to send every stu­dent back in Jan­u­ary. But we un­der­stand it needs to hap­pen slow­ly, but what are wait­ing for?” she said.

Ac­cord­ing to Open Schools TT mem­bers, the on­line sys­tem is af­fect­ing the aca­d­e­m­ic, emo­tion­al and men­tal de­vel­op­ment of chil­dren.

They ex­pressed con­cern about the is­sues faced by some stu­dents in ac­cess­ing class­es, the num­ber of stu­dents drop­ping out of school, as well as the re­port­ed in­crease in men­tal health is­sues among chil­dren.

“There’s a lack of en­gage­ment. A lack of so­cial­i­sa­tion. You have kids who are re­al­ly no longer in­ter­est­ed in learn­ing. So, you have the dropout,” said a teacher present at the protest.

In re­sponse to COVID-19, schools were closed in T&T in March 2020.

In Oc­to­ber 2021, af­ter the Gov­ern­ment made vac­ci­na­tions for chil­dren 12 years and over avail­able, sec­ondary school stu­dents in forms 4 to 6 were al­lowed to re­turn to class­rooms.

Both vac­ci­nat­ed and un­vac­ci­nat­ed stu­dents in those forms were al­lowed to re­turn.

All oth­er stu­dents—in pre-school, pri­ma­ry school and sec­ondary school—have to ac­cess class­es on­line.

The on­line school sys­tem has been in place for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 600 days.