KEVON FELMINE
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

As the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion steers clear of pri­vate schools’ busi­ness, vice-pres­i­dent of the Pri­vate Schools’ As­so­ci­a­tion An­tho­ny Mc­Collin is im­plor­ing school man­agers to show hu­man­i­ty in how they treat chil­dren whose par­ents can­not af­ford to re­sume their class­es.
Sev­er­al par­ents con­tact­ed Guardian Me­dia in the past week com­plain­ing that their chil­dren’s schools had is­sued let­ters say­ing class­es will re­sume on­line and if they fail to pay school fees their chil­dren will be ex­pelled.
But in a brief tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion yes­ter­day, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny said the op­er­a­tions of pri­vate schools were an arrange­ment be­tween par­ents and the schools’ man­age­ment. 
“We do not get in­volved in that,” Gar­cia said.
While the Ed­u­ca­tion Act gov­erns the over­all ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, it more or less dic­tates the op­er­a­tions of pub­lic schools and Mc­Collin said his mem­bers fol­low this act. But Gar­cia said the Con­cor­dat deals with preser­va­tions of rights for de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools.
Gar­cia al­so said they are mon­i­tor­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and are await­ing ad­vice from the Min­istry of Health be­fore mak­ing any de­ci­sion on the re­open­ing of schools.
Mc­Collin, who is the prin­ci­pal of Cor­pus Christi Col­lege, said the as­so­ci­a­tion com­pris­es 16 schools and they are yet to de­cide on the re­sump­tion of class­es as they await fur­ther in­for­ma­tion from the min­istry. He said their stu­dent pop­u­la­tion in­cludes chil­dren the min­istry as­signed to them. How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted there are sev­er­al schools which are not part of the as­so­ci­a­tion.
While the as­so­ci­a­tion can­not speak for the schools out­side its mem­ber­ship, Mc­Collin urged school man­agers to sym­pa­thise with stu­dents whose fam­i­ly’s fi­nances were se­vere­ly af­fect­ed by the shut­down of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty due to the virus.
“In the midst of all of this, I will en­cour­age all ed­u­ca­tors and school man­age­ment boards to em­ploy some hu­man­i­ty in mak­ing de­ci­sions. It is sim­ply be­cause you have an un­prece­dent­ed sit­u­a­tion and some par­ents might be in dire fi­nan­cial con­straints,” Mc­Collin said.

“They would need some sort of as­sis­tance. I am sure those prin­ci­pals and school man­agers will do their best to treat this on a case-by-case ba­sis.”

He said the as­so­ci­a­tion will soon dis­cuss how class­es can re­sume dur­ing the Stay-at-Home mea­sures and they will con­tact par­ents, as some are now un­em­ployed. There are sug­ges­tions that schools can re­duce fees or in­tro­duce a mora­to­ri­um for par­ents who can­not af­ford school fees. How­ev­er, he said he un­der­stands the plight of school man­agers who have salaries and oth­er ex­pens­es. An­oth­er is­sue is whether chil­dren would cope with on­line class­es.
“All of this im­pacts stu­dents’ learn­ing. Mov­ing from a pre­dom­i­nant­ly face-to-face sys­tem to class­es on­line, do ed­u­ca­tors be­lieve chil­dren will not be im­pact­ed by that lev­el of change?” Mc­Collin said. “It is not to say we were us­ing this sys­tem on a 70/30 per cent ba­sis pre­vi­ous­ly. This is a dras­tic shift and in some house­holds where par­ents can­not pay bills, the in­ter­net may be cut or chil­dren can­not get food to eat. We must take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion that so­cial chal­lenges af­fect chil­dren’s learn­ing.”
He ad­mit­ted that if schools go on­line for term three in the com­ing weeks and chil­dren are left out be­cause their par­ent can­not pay fees, this will cre­ate a learn­ing gap.
“This is the rea­son why I ask prin­ci­pals and school man­agers to walk on the side of cau­tion and look at the hu­man side of it if the min­istry has not yet de­clared a de­ci­sion that the third term will be­gin in Sep­tem­ber,” Mc­Collin said.