An­na-Lisa Paul

Schools across Trinidad and To­ba­go, in­clud­ing ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion fa­cil­i­ties, will like­ly not re­open be­fore Sep­tem­ber 2020, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia said yes­ter­day.

Not­ing it was un­like­ly the COVID-19 out­break would not be re­solved com­plete­ly be­fore the end of the year, he said yes­ter­day that pro­jec­tions have been made for the new aca­d­e­m­ic year to be­gin in Jan­u­ary 2021 fea­tur­ing a con­densed syl­labus com­bin­ing three school terms in­to two.

Dur­ing a vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence on the is­sue yes­ter­day, Gar­cia said Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley had ini­tial­ly giv­en an April 20 date for re­open­ing but it was now clear they could not make that tar­get.

How­ev­er, he added, said Cab­i­net will de­cide on the way for­ward when it meets to­mor­row.

“Cab­i­net will be the ones to de­cide if we are go­ing this way or not,” he said.

Gar­cia ac­knowl­edg­ing that lo­cal and re­gion­al ex­ams would be af­fect­ed by the con­tin­ued clo­sure of schools. He said the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am was orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled to be ad­min­is­tered on April 2 and would re­main with­out a def­i­nite cal­en­dar date for the time.

He ex­plained, “De­pend­ing on when­ev­er school re­opens, it would need, ac­cord­ing to the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tion Coun­cil (CXC), at least one month for the prepa­ra­tion so that our stu­dents will be able to write the ex­am in rel­a­tive com­fort.”

He said this process would in­volve the prop­er train­ing of in­vig­i­la­tors.

“At least one month be­fore the stu­dents can write the ex­am. And then for the ex­ams to be cor­rect­ed, that will take an­oth­er month and then for the place­ment to be done…that will take an­oth­er month.”

Re­gard­ing the re­gion­al Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am (CAPE) and the Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate (CSEC) ex­ams, which are ad­min­is­tered di­rect­ly by CXC, he said, “We need to look at it.”

He said CXC had pre­sent­ed pro­pos­als at a meet­ing of re­gion­al ed­u­ca­tion­al per­son­nel and fol­low­ing a Cab­i­net de­ci­sion last week, he said they were look­ing at hold­ing those ex­ams be­tween June and Ju­ly.

How­ev­er, he not­ed that “be­cause the sit­u­a­tion is so flu­id as it changes al­most every day, it seems to be that is some­thing we have to look at again.”

“We want to en­sure that when our stu­dents sit these ex­am­i­na­tions, there will be no im­ped­i­ments and the ex­ams would be done with­out any fault,” he stressed.

Gar­cia said al­though the clo­sure had re­sult­ed in teach­ers and stu­dents be­ing forced to re­main at home, oth­er mea­sures have been put in place to en­sure teach­ing and learn­ing con­tin­ued.

Elab­o­rat­ing on the min­istry’s ef­forts, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Lovell Fran­cis said two e-learn­ing plat­forms had been launched – the Ed­u­ca­tion Man­age­ment In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem (EMIS) and the School Learn­ing Man­age­ment Sys­tem (SLMS).

He said these plat­forms were crit­i­cal in sup­port­ing teach­ers and stu­dents in the on­line learn­ing realm and com­mend­ed teach­ers who rose to the chal­lenge to pro­vide con­tent for every ed­u­ca­tion­al lev­el, in­clud­ing the EC­CE, Pri­ma­ry and Sec­ondary.

Fran­cis said the plat­forms al­so en­abled teach­ers to con­duct vir­tu­al class­es and the pub­lic could al­so log on and ac­cess con­tent as was be­ing done by per­sons in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

“It would be a tragedy if in the midst of all these dif­fi­cul­ties, we al­low the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem to grind to a halt,” Fran­cis said, adding peo­ple could vis­it learn.moe.gov.tt to ac­cess the site.

For those house­holds where par­ents and chil­dren do not have ac­cess to elec­tron­ic de­vices and or in­ter­net ac­cess, Fran­cis said they were cur­rent­ly in dis­cus­sion with var­i­ous stake­hold­ers to form part­ner­ships to give them that ac­cess. For teach­ers with­out lap-tops or oth­er elec­tron­ic de­vices, Fran­cis said those cur­rent­ly kept at schools could be redi­rect­ed to them, while he es­ti­mat­ed there were ap­prox­i­mate­ly 60,000 stu­dents who did not have such ac­cess.

He said they were al­so hold­ing dis­cus­sions with the two larg­er providers about in­creas­ing in­ter­net ac­cess and band­width ca­pac­i­ty. The Catholic Board of Ed­u­ca­tion had al­so start­ed its own dri­ve to get peo­ple to do­nate de­vices which they can for­ward to stu­dents and UNICEF has pro­vid­ed some fund­ing to pur­chase de­vices, he added.

On the is­sue of spe­cial needs chil­dren and en­sur­ing they too are in­clud­ed, Gar­cia said a doc­u­ment has been com­piled fol­low­ing dis­cus­sions with stake­hold­ers and among the de­ci­sions is the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of three schools in each ed­u­ca­tion dis­trict to specif­i­cal­ly as­sist such per­sons.

The min­is­ters are to meet with the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) to­day to dis­cuss the plan go­ing for­ward.