Class­es at St George’s Col­lege, Barataria, have been sus­pend­ed un­til fur­ther no­tice due to the safe­ty haz­ards pre­sent­ed by its ceil­ing in­fra­struc­ture.

The news comes a week af­ter a con­crete slab fell off a build­ing at the San Juan North Sec­ondary, in­jur­ing a stu­dent.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said the school had in­curred ceil­ing dam­age “due to the heavy rains last week” and the is­sue was cur­rent­ly be­ing ad­dressed.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from St George’s prin­ci­pal Dr Asha Ram­raj-Sookdeo, there will be no phys­i­cal school un­til fur­ther no­tice. Class­es were sus­pend­ed from Tues­day.

In the cor­re­spon­dence, she said the teach­ing staff had con­duct­ed meet­ings to dis­cuss the way for­ward while keep­ing the best in­ter­est of stu­dents in mind.

While the school can­not man­date teach­ers to de­liv­er the cur­ricu­lum on­line, “some teach­ers in­di­cat­ed their will­ing­ness to teach on­line” and as such, they were urg­ing stu­dents to com­ply, she said.

As a re­sult of this, the school im­plored par­ents and stu­dents to check their emails and What­sApp group chats for links to at­tend class­es or for work sent by teach­ers, while al­so be­ing pa­tient as they processed the changes.

In a sec­ond re­lease from the prin­ci­pal, it was re­vealed that “the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion is in the process of car­ry­ing out re­pairs. They have as­sured us that they will at­tempt to at least re­move the safe­ty haz­ard to en­sure school re­sumes phys­i­cal­ly for stu­dents as soon as pos­si­ble.”

Dr Ram­raj-Sookdeo added, “We are in a cri­sis, so we are ask­ing par­ents to please as­sist by en­sur­ing your chil­dren are re­vis­ing all their work as a lot of work was done for the term thus far.”

Guardian Me­dia was un­able to ver­i­fy the ex­tent of the dam­age to the school.

Mean­while, Dr Gads­by-Dol­ly al­so re­vealed that stu­dents at the San Juan North Sec­ondary School were now on ro­ta­tion un­til re­pairs at the school are com­plet­ed.

This com­ple­tion is sched­uled for this week, fol­low­ing an in­ci­dent where a 13-year-old school­boy was in­jured by a falling piece of con­crete at the school.