An­na-Lisa Paul

Stu­dents across all lev­els of the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem will re­turn to the class­room from April 19, where a full, dai­ly sched­ule will once again be im­ple­ment­ed.

Con­firm­ing that aca­d­e­m­ic term three will start for chil­dren from the Ear­ly Child­hood Care and Ed­u­ca­tion (EC­CE), pri­ma­ry, sec­ondary and stu­dents at ter­tiary lev­el, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly yes­ter­day said, “The ef­fect of our chil­dren not be­ing in school can­not be over­stat­ed. It has been a very dif­fi­cult time.”

For stu­dents un­able to at­tend school phys­i­cal­ly for one rea­son or an­oth­er, this is some­thing the min­istry can­not cater for at this time.

How­ev­er, Gads­by-Dol­ly ac­knowl­edged the fear by some par­ents and stu­dents to re­turn, as she said home-school­ing was an op­tion that was both open and le­gal in T&T.

She said the min­istry will be meet­ing with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) be­fore schools re­open, as a pre­vi­ous meet­ing had not come off as planned. She said teach­ers will not be man­dat­ed to pro­vide syn­chro­nous, on­line class­es fol­low­ing the full re­turn to phys­i­cal school­ing.

Out­lin­ing just how the re­sump­tion will be rolled out, act­ing Chief Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer Lisa Hen­ry-David said the Ed­u­ca­tion Dis­trict Health Unit, which has a to­tal of 18 nurs­es, will be in charge of COVID-19 man­age­ment in schools. In­di­cat­ing what will be ex­pect­ed of stu­dents up­on their phys­i­cal re­turn to the class­room, she said pro­to­cols had been de­vel­oped for vis­i­tors and all school per­son­nel in­clud­ing stu­dents. This will in­clude the “manda­to­ry wear­ing of masks, the ex­cep­tion be­ing our EC­CE stu­dents. Tem­per­a­ture checks at en­try points. Hand-wash­ing at sta­tions at schools en­trances as well as strate­gic points through­out the school’s com­pound, and the use of hand sani­tis­ers.”

She as­sured that all schools had been pro­vid­ed with the nec­es­sary clean­ing agents and sani­tis­ers and quar­an­tine ar­eas had been des­ig­nat­ed in each school for staff and stu­dents who dis­play flu-like symp­toms, while an en­hanced clean­ing reg­i­men will re­main in ef­fect through­out.

Hen­ry-David said there will be a re­in­force­ment of cer­tain reg­u­la­tions such as the non-shar­ing of books, sta­tionery, snacks, food and drinks among stu­dents.

“Schools will con­tin­ue to en­cour­age all stu­dents, through the use of sig­nage and an­nounce­ments at as­sem­blies and break-times, to walk with a per­son­al sup­ply of sani­tis­ers and/or hand soap, as well as re­place­ment masks; wash their hands fre­quent­ly with soap and wa­ter, cough and sneeze in­to the sleeves or el­bows or a tis­sue which is to be im­me­di­ate­ly dis­card­ed; stay at home if ex­pe­ri­enc­ing flu-like symp­toms and main­tain their per­son­al space as much as pos­si­ble.”

Sub­ject and time-tabling are to re­vert to nor­mal, pre-Covid work­ing hours for pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools will re­turn, while su­per­vi­sion in and out of the class­room is now a must to en­sure ad­her­ence to healthy and safe­ty pro­to­cols at all times.

Cog­nisant of the eco­nom­ic con­straints fac­ing many par­ents, of­fi­cials said schools have been man­dat­ed to re­lax uni­form re­quire­ments and en­cour­aged par­ents to co­op­er­ate with school of­fi­cials.

Ex­tra-cur­ric­u­lar and sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties, along with the school-feed­ing and school-trans­port pro­grammes, will al­so re­sume ful­ly at the start of the new term.

At the EC­CE lev­el, in­com­ing stu­dents and their par­ents, as well as the staff, will be treat­ed to an ori­en­ta­tion ses­sion in the first week where all pro­to­cols will be out­lined. Sep­a­rate ses­sions are to be held for teach­ers and par­ents so each group will know what is ex­pect­ed of them, while trust-build­ing ex­er­cis­es will be car­ried out with the stu­dents dai­ly to fos­ter pos­i­tive in­ter­ac­tion.

Hen­ry-David said the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion (SSSD) will al­so fo­cus on tran­si­tion­ing and de­brief­ing stu­dents. The unit will seek to sen­si­tise stu­dents on nav­i­gat­ing the changes over the past two years; re-learn­ing pos­i­tive and ac­cept­able be­hav­iours in and out­side the class­room; re­in­forc­ing cop­ing mech­a­nisms re­gard­ing men­tal health is­sues and grief/loss ses­sions.

Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the min­istry, Kurt Mey­er, pre­sent­ed a sta­tus re­port on school in­fra­struc­tur­al re­pairs and fur­ni­ture pro­vi­sion. He said fis­cal 2021/2022 had seen re­pairs be­ing ef­fect­ed at 198 schools, in­clud­ing EC­CE, pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools. Mey­er said 61 schools had been iden­ti­fied for emer­gency re­pairs ahead of the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am on Thurs­day.

“These jobs are wash­rooms, lights, ven­ti­la­tion is­sues,” he said, adding those jobs should be com­plet­ed by to­mor­row but crews are on stand­by in the event any ad­verse sit­u­a­tion aris­es.

Thurs­day’s SEA will be­gin at 8.30 am at 552 ex­am cen­tres, where 19,198 stu­dents (9,904 boys and 9,294 girls) are reg­is­tered to write the ex­am. Con­ces­sions have been grant­ed to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 440 stu­dents this year. Mean­while, a to­tal of 3,400 teach­ers and prin­ci­pals have been trained as in­vig­i­la­tors for the ex­am.

On is­sues of re­cent in­ci­dents of school vi­o­lence and how they plan to tack­le the is­sue, Gads­by-Dol­ly said sev­er­al stake­hold­ers had come to­geth­er to form a high-lev­el team to ad­dress the root caus­es and de­vel­op a holis­tic mech­a­nism that can help trou­bled stu­dents.

On the is­sue of school so­cial work­ers, the min­is­ter said more stu­dents were go­ing to school need­ing that lev­el of sup­port but they could not keep adding per­son­nel to the di­vi­sion with­out get­ting to the root of prob­lems af­fect­ing stu­dents.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS) act­ing sec­re­tary-gen­er­al Vi­jay Ma­haraj said all schools will be ready for the restart. How­ev­er, he ex­pressed con­cern for his First and Sec­ond Year stu­dents, as com­ing to school for them will be more about meet­ing each oth­er and learn­ing how to in­ter­act with one an­oth­er.

Ma­haraj agreed with the re­lax­ing of the uni­form reg­u­la­tion and in­di­cat­ed his will­ing­ness to have stu­dents don their phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion uni­form for school dur­ing the new term.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 15 SDMS schools are cur­rent­ly with­out stand­ing ther­mal scan­ners and Ma­haraj said he was aware there were some schools yet to re­ceive clean­ing agents and san­i­tiz­ers.

How­ev­er, he con­clud­ed, “Our schools will be more than ready.”

Catholic Ed­u­ca­tion Board of Man­age­ment CEO Sharon Man­groo they too were ready for the re­open­ing but want to see a de­brief­ing for both teach­ers and stu­dents.

“We need to recog­nise that every­body would have had dif­fer­ent ex­pe­ri­ences while they were home, and that the chil­dren are not com­ing to school ready to pick up from where they left off,” Man­groo said.