Sascha Wil­son

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly says she is await­ing the fig­ures re­gard­ing to­day on­line black out ac­tion by teach­ers. 

She was speak­ing to mem­bers of the me­dia dur­ing a tour at the Holy Cross An­gli­can Pri­ma­ry School in Mara­bel­la this morn­ing.

She says the school is 90 per­cent com­plet­ed and will be opened as soon as pos­si­ble.

Asked to re­spond to The Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) black ac­tion to­day, the min­is­ter said, “I don’t know I havn’t seen any fig­ures yet. I don’t know ex­act­ly what is hap­pen­ing there but I do know that our chil­dren, our schools are ros­tered and I know teach­ers have been mak­ing the ef­fort. I don’t know what the fig­ures are for to­day.”

Al­so re­spond­ing to the bud­get al­lo­ca­tion for her min­istry which is less than last year’s al­lo­ca­tion, she said, “At this point in time what­ev­er re­sources are al­lo­cat­ed to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion would be put to the best. As you can see we are at a school that has been a ben­e­fi­cia­ry of al­lo­ca­tion of the min­is­ter and we will con­tin­ue to all that we can, what is pos­si­ble, based on what­ev­er al­lo­ca­tion we have.”

Com­ment­ing al­so on par­ents who are up­set that their un­vac­ci­nat­ed can­not re­turn to phys­i­cal school, she said, “What I would say to this is that all pro­vi­sions are be­ing made to give our chil­dren the best chance of suc­cess. The best chance of suc­cess is for them to be at school phys­i­cal­ly and at this point in time the safest way for them to do that is to be vac­ci­nat­ed and the vac­cines are still avail­able, we are en­cour­ag­ing all par­ents to take ad­van­tage of the op­por­tu­ni­ty to vac­ci­nate their chil­dren”.

She al­so not­ed that there were a few ab­sent teach­ers at yes­ter­days phys­i­cal re­open­ing of school for stu­dents in Forms 4 to 6.

“I want to thank the teach­ers for mak­ing the ef­fort we vis­it­ed two schools yes­ter­day and the teach­ers were out pre­pared to ac­cli­ma­tise the chil­dren back to the class­room again, so we thank­ful of the ef­forts of the teach­ers and prin­ci­pals for pulling it to­geth­er and mak­ing hap­pen.”

With re­gards to in­ci­dent out­side the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion where two peo­ple were de­tained, but lat­er re­leased, af­ter at­tempt­ing to de­liv­er a let­ter to the min­is­ter, Gads­by-Dol­ly said she heard a let­ter was de­liv­ered and some­one sent her a mes­sage on her phone about this.

How­ev­er, she said yes­ter­day was the Bud­get and she is out in the field to­day, so she would be look­ing at the let­ter lat­er to­day.

The min­is­ter said who was ac­com­pa­nied by min­istry of­fi­cials, rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the An­gli­can Board and MTS, will al­so be vis­it­ing the Ce­dros An­gli­can and For­res Re­serve An­gli­can schools.