KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

The Bish­op of the An­gli­can Church of T&T and chair­man of the Bish­op Anstey As­so­ci­a­tion, Rt Rev­erend Claude Berkley, says there was no agree­ment to con­vert the Bish­op Anstey, Trin­i­ty Col­lege East (BATCE) schools to gov­ern­ment-as­sist­ed mod­el. 

In fact, he said he was sur­prised by the course the mat­ter has tak­en.

The head of the lo­cal An­gli­can Dio­cese, un­der which the schools fall, said the as­so­ci­a­tion was in­stead open to dis­cussing a pro­pos­al.

Less than a week ago, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion is­sued a re­lease stat­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions on the terms of the tran­si­tion con­tin­ue as the State now had com­plete own­er­ship of the schools’ build­ings and land in Trinci­ty.

In the re­lease, the min­istry said BATCE had a build, own, lease, trans­fer (BOLT) arrange­ment with the gov­ern­ment at an es­ti­mat­ed $60 mil­lion a year per an­num.

It said the loan had been com­plete­ly re­paid by the gov­ern­ment in Ju­ly 2021.

The MoE al­so re­vealed with­in the next 30 to 60 days, rec­om­men­da­tions for the tran­si­tion to a gov­ern­ment-as­sist­ed mod­el will be com­plete and sent to Cab­i­net.

How­ev­er, the Bish­op of the An­gli­can Dio­cese said the Bish­op Anstey As­so­ci­a­tion did not ac­cept any of­fer to tran­si­tion the col­leges to gov­ern­ment-as­sist­ed schools.

In­stead, he said the as­so­ci­a­tion told the min­istry it was open to dis­cussing its pro­pos­al to move to a de­nom­i­na­tion­al gov­ern­ment-as­sist­ed school mod­el (DGASM), but there has been no con­crete agree­ment on a wide range of is­sues.

Bish­op Berkley added the BAA is al­so un­der the im­pres­sion that its 20-year con­tract with the State had been au­to­mat­i­cal­ly re­newed for an­oth­er 20 years.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia via tele­phone yes­ter­day Berkley said, “I was sur­prised to see the way the en­tire thing has erupt­ed be­cause we have been meet­ing, true enough, there is no in­for­ma­tion that we can share as yet, be­cause things are in­de­ter­mi­nate. We haven’t come to any con­clu­sions, and we seem to have, from the look at things, two dif­fer­ent view­points of how the mat­ter might be ad­dressed.”

He added, “We are in deep em­pa­thy with the teach­ers, stu­dents, par­ents and with the com­mu­ni­ty be­cause we did not re­alise the state of the ad­vance­ment of the dis­cus­sions that was in­di­cat­ed. It is a fun­ny place to be be­cause we are part­ners with the State on this project. What can we say out­side of what we un­der­stand and our ad­vo­ca­cy for the teach­ers and pri­mar­i­ly for the stu­dents?”

In a re­lease on Sat­ur­day, the BAA told its staff that it had no agree­ment with the gov­ern­ment for any tran­si­tion over a five-year pe­ri­od as stat­ed by the min­istry.

“There cur­rent­ly ex­ists a legal­ly bind­ing con­tract be­tween the BAA and the gov­ern­ment to pay man­age­ment fees to the BAA for stu­dent places. It is er­ro­neous to say that the man­age­ment agree­ment has come to an end,” it added.

‘Staff con­fused’

The con­tra­dic­to­ry po­si­tions on the state of the schools left staff at BATCE con­fused.

Some teach­ers told Guardian Me­dia that they were con­sumed with “shock and hor­ror” af­ter read­ing the MoE’s re­lease last week.

The teach­ers said they are now even more con­fused and frus­trat­ed af­ter the BAA claimed some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent.

The teach­ers said they did not know who to be­lieve and no one could re­as­sure them that they would be able to re­tain their jobs.

One teacher, who asked not to be named, said even more trou­bling was that staff can­not pro­vide an­swers to ques­tions posed by wor­ried par­ents and stu­dents, es­pe­cial­ly stu­dents prepar­ing for their CSEC and CAPE ex­am­i­na­tions.

BAA: Teach­ers’ best in­ter­ests at heart

Mean­while, the Bish­op of the An­gli­can Church said the as­so­ci­a­tion had the teach­ers’ best in­ter­ests at heart.

“We have a long list of the teach­ers’ con­cerns, deep con­cerns and less­er con­cerns. It is that list that has guid­ed our con­ver­sa­tion and I will hes­i­tate to give them some words of com­fort that may not be true. I know that we have the teach­ers’ well-be­ing at heart.

“That is the way that the dis­cus­sions have been go­ing all the time and we are hop­ing that we can ar­rive at a place that will land the teach­ers in good stead, but I would not want to get in­to what I would call ‘gun talk’. The mat­ters have to be ne­go­ti­at­ed... But if it helps at all, the teach­ers have been at the cen­tre of our thoughts, our con­ver­sa­tions, our prayers and our best wish­es,” Berkley said.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to the TTUTA pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin and Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly for their re­ac­tions to con­cerns on the mat­ter but no re­spons­es were re­ceived.