Op­po­si­tion Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Tabaquite, Ani­ta Haynes, has urged the gov­ern­ment to cease its "cav­a­lier treat­ment" of stake­hold­ers' con­cerns as they forge ahead with their plans to re­sume in-per­son class­es.

“The Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry con­tin­ues to steam­roll stake­hold­ers, hasti­ly im­ple­ment­ing half-baked poli­cies while leav­ing a trail of unan­swered ques­tions in their wake,” she said in a press re­lease.

“The re­cent an­nounce­ment that the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion is plan­ning the re­turn to in-per­son class­es for stu­dents in Forms 1 to 3 in a cou­ple of weeks is par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cern­ing be­cause it re­it­er­ates that the min­istry is not tru­ly con­sid­er­ing the con­cerns of par­ents and teach­ers,” said Haynes.

Haynes al­so ques­tioned whether or not there was suf­fi­cient da­ta to sup­port this de­ci­sion.

“Do we know how many vac­ci­nat­ed stu­dents ac­tu­al­ly re­turned to phys­i­cal class­es? Does the avail­able da­ta sup­port the re­turn to in-per­son learn­ing for the ma­jor­i­ty of the sec­ondary school stu­dent pop­u­la­tion at this time?”

Haynes con­tin­ued, “I have raised the re­al risk of un­vac­ci­nat­ed stu­dents be­ing left be­hind in this process and there has been no co­he­sive re­sponse by the gov­ern­ment. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, very lit­tle has been said about how we are pro­vid­ing for our stu­dents with spe­cial needs. There has been a lack of gen­uine con­sul­ta­tion by this gov­ern­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion. In­struct­ing schools to re­open and then fig­ure things out is not good pol­i­cy-mak­ing, I would ar­gue it's not pol­i­cy-mak­ing at all.”

"The Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) con­tin­ues to lament the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion's dis­missal of their con­cerns and rec­om­men­da­tions. The As­so­ci­a­tion claims that the min­istry's cur­rent man­date pro­motes "aca­d­e­m­ic in­equity", the very out­come I have been warn­ing against over the last year and a half."

Haynes al­so ex­pressed con­cern that in­fra­struc­tur­al re­pairs to a num­ber of schools are still out­stand­ing.

“While the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion claims to be fo­cused on in­fra­struc­ture for vir­tu­al learn­ing, there are schools that are still in need of phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture re­pairs. More­over, some schools are un­able to fa­cil­i­tate all stu­dents while im­ple­ment­ing the rec­om­mend­ed so­cial dis­tance pro­to­col. I am once again call­ing on the min­istry to en­gage in gen­uine, good faith con­sul­ta­tions and to de­vel­op poli­cies based on da­ta and stake­hold­er in­put."