KEVON FELMINE

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Paul Richards has crit­i­cised the prac­tice of some af­ter­noon lessons. The Na­tion­al Coun­cil of Par­ent-Teacher As­so­ci­a­tions (NCP­TA) raised con­cerns that cer­tain teach­ers may de­lib­er­ate­ly with­hold parts of the cur­ricu­lum to fa­cil­i­tate these ex­tra ses­sions.

A Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) on So­cial Ser­vices and Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion en­quiry dis­cussed the is­sue, fo­cus­ing on un­der­per­for­mance in the na­tion’s schools and the ad­e­qua­cy of the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion.

NCP­TA pres­i­dent Wal­ter Stew­art cau­tious­ly used the term "mafia" while ex­press­ing the as­so­ci­a­tion’s view that teach­ers had no rea­son to fail in ad­e­quate­ly de­liv­er­ing the cur­ricu­lum with­in des­ig­nat­ed school hours. He said it was es­sen­tial to un­der­stand why some teach­ers could not do so and why par­ents were be­ing asked to pay for ad­di­tion­al pri­vate lessons in the af­ter­noons.

T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin said his or­gan­i­sa­tion would not sup­port teach­ers de­lib­er­ate­ly with­hold­ing lessons, call­ing it un­eth­i­cal. How­ev­er, he clar­i­fied that as long as pri­vate lessons oc­curred out­side school hours, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion had no ju­ris­dic­tion over them.

Richards strong­ly con­demned the prac­tice, say­ing it was “ob­scene” for teach­ers, who are paid by the State, to re­quest ad­di­tion­al pay­ment out­side the class­room to de­liv­er the cur­ricu­lum.