Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion MP and for­mer ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly has ac­cused Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar of us­ing her re­cent com­ments on stu­dent dis­ci­pline as a dis­trac­tion from fail­ures with­in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

Speak­ing at an Op­po­si­tion me­dia con­fer­ence in Port-of- Spain yes­ter­day, Gads­by-Dol­ly crit­i­cised Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath over de­lays in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of book grants and bur­saries, school re­pairs, lap­tops and oth­er ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes, as well as short­com­ings in Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices (SSS).

She ar­gued that Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s in­ter­ven­tion in the de­bate on school dis­ci­pline was in­tend­ed to di­vert at­ten­tion from those is­sues.

“The ul­ti­mate dis­trac­tion now comes from the Prime Min­is­ter,” Gads­by-Dol­ly said, ac­cus­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar of “try­ing to make up for the min­is­ter” by en­ter­ing the ed­u­ca­tion dis­cus­sion.

She de­scribed the PM’s sug­ges­tion that mis­be­hav­ing stu­dents be sent home to their par­ents as “a red her­ring” and “ut­ter non­sense.”

Gads­by-Dol­ly said the State has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to sup­port stu­dents ex­pe­ri­enc­ing be­hav­iour­al dif­fi­cul­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly when their home en­vi­ron­ment may not pro­vide the nec­es­sary in­ter­ven­tion.

“The Gov­ern­ment has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to as­sist stu­dents who have prob­lems with be­hav­iour­al trans­for­ma­tion,” she said.

“If you send them to school, you try to help them, it’s not work­ing, then what does Gov­ern­ment do? And it can’t be sim­ply, ‘well, just send them home.’”

She ar­gued that some chil­dren ef­fec­tive­ly raise them­selves and send­ing them home may do lit­tle to ad­dress the un­der­ly­ing caus­es of their be­hav­iour.

Gads­by-Dol­ly point­ed to pro­grammes pre­vi­ous­ly op­er­at­ed un­der the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), in­clud­ing the Mil­i­tary-Led Aca­d­e­m­ic Train­ing (MI­LAT) pro­gramme and youth camps, as ex­am­ples of al­ter­na­tive en­vi­ron­ments where stu­dents could re­ceive sup­port and be­hav­iour­al in­ter­ven­tion.

She said the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion al­so worked with or­gan­i­sa­tions such as SER­VOL and MI­LAT to pro­vide op­tions for stu­dents who could not re­main in the main­stream school sys­tem.

She said the is­sue is not whether par­ents are re­spon­si­ble for their chil­dren, but what hap­pens when par­ents are un­able to pro­vide the nec­es­sary sup­port.

She warned that fail­ing to in­ter­vene ear­ly could re­sult in more young peo­ple en­ter­ing the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.

“If we don’t house them some­where where they can trans­form their be­hav­iour, we will end up hous­ing them in jail,” she said.

Gads­by-Dol­ly al­so de­fend­ed the PNM’s record on youth crime, re­ject­ing any sug­ges­tion that the is­sue was unique to the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“Youth crim­i­nal­i­ty is not a PNM prob­lem. It is a coun­try prob­lem. It is a glob­al prob­lem,” she said.

Point­ing to youth crime trends in coun­tries such as the Unit­ed States and Unit­ed King­dom, she ar­gued that gov­ern­ments must fo­cus on man­ag­ing the prob­lem rather than claim­ing they can elim­i­nate it en­tire­ly.

“These are not things you can solve. These are prob­lems you man­age as a coun­try and as a gov­ern­ment. And you have to put things in place to man­age it,” she said.

She ex­pressed con­cern that pro­grammes in­tend­ed to ad­dress youth be­hav­iour­al is­sues were be­ing dis­man­tled or not re­newed un­der the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion and ques­tioned what would re­place them.

“I can tell you what’s be­ing dis­man­tled, but I cer­tain­ly can’t tell you what’s be­ing put in place,” she said.

Gads­by-Dol­ly al­so crit­i­cised Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion not to re­new the con­tracts of hun­dreds of SSS per­son­nel, in­clud­ing school safe­ty of­fi­cers, guid­ance coun­sel­lors, di­ag­nos­tic spe­cial­ists and spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cers.

She said these pro­fes­sion­als pro­vide crit­i­cal sup­port to vul­ner­a­ble stu­dents, teach­ers and par­ents.

Gads­by-Dol­ly said the PNM re­jects what it views as the dis­man­tling of stu­dent sup­port ser­vices, de­lays in book grants and bur­saries, and the fail­ure to re­open youth camps and train­ing pro­grammes.

She chal­lenged the Gov­ern­ment to out­line its strat­e­gy for young peo­ple re­quir­ing be­hav­iour­al in­ter­ven­tion.

“What is your plan and your pro­gramme for young peo­ple, for those who need help for be­hav­iour­al trans­for­ma­tion?” she asked.

“I chal­lenge you to­day to stand and speak and ac­count to the peo­ple who elect­ed you.”

Book grant de­lays

Turn­ing to the book grant pro­gramme, Gads­by-Dol­ly ques­tioned how many grants had ac­tu­al­ly been dis­trib­uted, claim­ing thou­sands of par­ents/guardians were still await­ing ap­proval or pay­ment.

She said a poll con­duct­ed among her con­stituents, which at­tract­ed more than 200 re­spons­es, in­di­cat­ed that on­ly a small num­ber had re­ceived the grant.

Gads­by-Dol­ly said the mat­ter was par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cern­ing be­cause many of the re­quired books are work­books that stu­dents are ex­pect­ed to use in the class­room.

She al­so crit­i­cised the min­istry’s han­dling of school re­pairs, ac­cus­ing the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter of de­clar­ing schools ready for the new term de­spite re­ports of out­stand­ing is­sues at sev­er­al in­sti­tu­tions.

She ques­tioned the sta­tus of re­pairs and fur­ni­ture re­place­ment at schools where con­cerns had been raised.

Gads­by-Dol­ly fur­ther ques­tioned Gov­ern­ment’s lap­top and e-book ini­tia­tive, claim­ing that some of the ap­prox­i­mate­ly 18,000 lap­tops pro­cured un­der the ad­min­is­tra­tion were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing tech­ni­cal prob­lems.

She said par­ents were be­ing ad­vised against pur­chas­ing cer­tain text­books be­cause stu­dents would re­ly on e-books, de­spite con­cerns over ac­cess to func­tion­ing de­vices.

The for­mer ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter al­so queried the sta­tus of the 2026 Na­tion­al Bur­sary Pro­gramme, not­ing that ap­pli­ca­tions closed in June but no an­nounce­ment had yet been made. She said high-per­form­ing stu­dents from vul­ner­a­ble back­grounds were de­pend­ing on the as­sis­tance to con­tin­ue their ed­u­ca­tion.

Gads­by-Dol­ly ad­di­tion­al­ly raised con­cerns about ac­cred­i­ta­tion with­in the ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor and again called on the Min­is­ter of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion Prakash Per­sad to clar­i­fy the sta­tus of pro­grammes and in­sti­tu­tions.