Stu­dents of the Ch­agua­nas North Sec­ondary School will re­sume their stud­ies on­line fol­low­ing the sus­pen­sion of in-per­son class­es due to in­fra­struc­tur­al is­sues at the school.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath yes­ter­day con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that class­es were sus­pend­ed af­ter it was dis­cov­ered that the sew­er lines were clogged on May 7.

He said of­fi­cials from the Ed­u­ca­tion Fa­cil­i­ties Plan­ning and Pro­cure­ment Di­vi­sion (EF­P­PD) vis­it­ed the school to as­sess the sit­u­a­tion.

“Be­cause of the lim­it­ed use of the wash­rooms, sus­pen­sion of class­es was done,” Dowlath said, adding that a con­trac­tor was al­ready as­signed to be­gin re­pairs by to­day.

The min­is­ter an­tic­i­pat­ed that the re­pairs would be com­plet­ed over the week­end, with face-to-face class­es ex­pect­ed to re­sume on Mon­day (May 19).

In the in­ter­im, the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry has di­rect­ed that stu­dents in Forms 1 to 4 re­ceive tu­ition through on­line plat­forms and What­sApp. The di­rec­tive was is­sued to the school’s prin­ci­pal by the Di­rec­tor of School Su­per­vi­sion.

Par­ents, how­ev­er, re­mained frus­trat­ed by what they de­scribed as re­peat­ed dis­rup­tions.

Yes­ter­day, one par­ent told Guardian Me­dia, “Every time this school has main­te­nance is­sues the chil­dren suf­fer. Forms 1 to 3 had no class­es for sev­er­al months dur­ing the 2023–2024 school year be­cause of elec­tri­cal prob­lems. Now it is the sew­er­age sys­tem.”

The min­istry has promised to mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion to en­sure class­es re­sume as promised.