Class­es have re­sumed at Ch­agua­nas North Sec­ondary School fol­low­ing a sew­er-re­lat­ed is­sue that forced stu­dents back in­to on­line learn­ing last week.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath and Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Jacque­line Charles vis­it­ed the school on Fri­day, May 16, along­side Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple Van­dana Mo­hit, who is al­so the MP for Ch­agua­nas East. The site vis­it was in­tend­ed to as­sess progress on emer­gency re­pair work, which be­gan the day be­fore.

In-per­son class­es were sus­pend­ed on May 7 af­ter clogged sew­er lines ren­dered wash­room fa­cil­i­ties un­us­able. Stu­dents in Forms 1 to 4 were tem­porar­i­ly placed back on What­sApp and on­line in­struc­tion while con­trac­tors moved in. The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion said most of the re­pairs were com­plet­ed by Fri­day, with re­main­ing works sched­uled for the week­end.

Of­fi­cials said all CXC ex­am­i­na­tions will pro­ceed as planned and gave an as­sur­ance that the school’s 1,060 stu­dents will con­tin­ue to re­ceive un­in­ter­rupt­ed teach­ing.

One par­ent told Guardian Me­dia ear­li­er this week that stu­dents in Forms 1 to 3 had al­ready lost months of class­es dur­ing the last aca­d­e­m­ic year due to elec­tri­cal is­sues. “Every time this school has main­te­nance is­sues, the chil­dren suf­fer,” she said.

The Min­istry has pledged on­go­ing mon­i­tor­ing and said it will work to pre­vent fur­ther dis­rup­tions.