KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

It is a new year and new school term, yet many mi­grant chil­dren are still out of school de­spite be­ing promised to be placed in the coun­try’s pub­lic school sys­tem at the pri­ma­ry school lev­el.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly in­di­cat­ed it was the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al present­ly deal­ing with the mat­ter.

Gads­by-Dol­ly said, “The min­istry is await­ing the reg­u­la­tions be­ing pre­pared by the AG’s of­fice. As soon as we are ad­vised that we can, the min­istry will im­ple­ment.”

Ef­forts to con­tact At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour were fu­tile yes­ter­day. Back in Ju­ly of last year, For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne said the Gov­ern­ment was ad­vanc­ing pol­i­cy geared to­wards in­te­grat­ing mi­grant chil­dren in­to the pri­ma­ry school ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem by Sep­tem­ber.

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion had al­so been in talks with the Catholic Ed­u­ca­tion Board last year in prepa­ra­tion for en­rol­ment.

But de­spite over a dozen Ro­man Catholic schools say­ing they were ready to ac­cept mi­grant chil­dren be­fore the new school term in Sep­tem­ber 2023, the ball re­mains with the AG’s of­fice.

There have al­so been no talks about mi­grant stu­dents be­ing in­te­grat­ed in­to the sec­ondary school sys­tem.