The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has ad­vised that in-per­son class­es for Forms 1-3 will re­sume in Feb­ru­ary 2022.

The Min­istry made the an­nounce­ment via a news re­lease fol­low­ing a meet­ing with stake­hold­ers on­Wednes­day.

The fol­low­ing is the state­ment by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion:

Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cials, led by Min­is­ters of Ed­u­ca­tion, Dr. Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly and Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian, met with TTUTA and the wider stake­hold­er groups on No­vem­ber 25th and 26th , 2021 re­spec­tive­ly, and again with TTUTA on De­cem­ber 10th, 2021 re­gard­ing op­er­a­tions of schools in Term II 2021/2022. Stake­hold­ers were gen­er­al­ly in favour of Forms 4-6 re­turn­ing to phys­i­cal at­ten­dance, while TTUTA rec­om­mend­ed phys­i­cal at­ten­dance for Forms 5 and 6, for prac­ti­cal sub­ject el­e­ments on­ly.

The ma­jor con­cerns which sur­faced dur­ing stake­hold­er con­sul­ta­tions cen­tered around en­sur­ing the safe­ty of our chil­dren while main­tain­ing the qual­i­ty of their ed­u­ca­tion.

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, in con­sid­er­ing the op­er­a­tions of schools in Term II, takes in­to ac­count the rec­om­men­da­tions of the stake­hold­ers, as well as guid­ance of­fered by in­ter­na­tion­al bod­ies.

The Unit­ed Na­tions In­ter­na­tion­al Chil­dren's Emer­gency Fund (UNICEF), in its De­cem­ber 18th, 2021 ar­ti­cle ti­tled, “UN Urges no School Clo­sures De­spite In­creas­ing Omi­cron Cas­es”, ad­mon­ished that schools should be the last to close even with ris­ing COVID-19 in­fec­tion rates and in­creas­ing Omi­cron cas­es.

The Cen­tre for Dis­ease Con­trol (CDC) Guide­lines; dat­ed No­vem­ber 5th, 2021, rec­om­mends mul­ti­ple lay­ers of pro­tec­tion for stu­dents and school per­son­nel to re­duce the in­ci­dence of COVID-19 in­fec­tions while main­tain­ing phys­i­cal school at­ten­dance. These lay­ers of pro­tec­tion in­clude:

Vac­ci­na­tion for all el­i­gi­ble school per­son­nel and stu­dents

Uni­ver­sal mask­ing for all school per­son­nel, vis­i­tors and stu­dents, es­pe­cial­ly when op­ti­mal three feet phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing can­not be main­tained.

The use of rapid test­ing to af­ford re­sults with­in 24 hours, which would al­low for ef­fec­tive­ness of de­ci­sion-mak­ing with re­spect to quar­an­tine plans and in­fec­tion man­age­ment.

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has im­ple­ment­ed mea­sures in schools to main­tain as safe an en­vi­ron­ment as pos­si­ble. Along with the pro­vi­sion of sinks for hand­wash­ing through­out school com­pounds, free-stand­ing and hand­held tem­per­a­ture scan­ners, clean­ing and san­i­ti­za­tion ma­te­ri­als and the im­ple­men­ta­tion of en­try pro­to­cols; the fol­low­ing mea­sures have been in­sti­tut­ed:

The Ed­u­ca­tion Dis­trict Health Unit (ED­HU) of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, es­tab­lished in Jan­u­ary 2021, de­vel­oped and im­ple­ments the Guide­lines for the Man­age­ment of COVID-19 Cas­es in the Pub­lic School Sys­tem. The Unit con­tin­ues to work in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Coun­ty Med­ical Of­fi­cers of Health (CMOH) and the Min­istry of Health to pro­vide clear guid­ance to schools on pro­to­cols for case man­age­ment to mit­i­gate and pre­vent the spread of COVID-19, keep­ing schools as safe as pos­si­ble.

The Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny Ltd (NMTS), which per­forms jan­i­to­r­i­al ser­vices at schools, has up­grad­ed their du­ties to in­crease the san­i­ti­za­tion of class­rooms and high touch / high traf­fic ar­eas.

The num­ber of pos­i­tive COVID-19 cas­es among staff and stu­dents at schools through­out Trinidad for the pe­ri­od Oc­to­ber 4th – De­cem­ber 10th, 2021, when stu­dent and staff were in phys­i­cal at­ten­dance at school was 162; which agrees with glob­al re­ports that phys­i­cal school has not been proven to cause sig­nif­i­cant ris­es in the lev­el of COVID-19 in­fec­tions with­in coun­tries. Prin­ci­pals; stu­dents; staff and par­ents have been co-op­er­at­ing with the Min­istries of Ed­u­ca­tion and Health to keep schools as safe as pos­si­ble.

While there are many dif­fer­ent views on school re-open­ing through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go, the gov­ern­ment has a man­date to pre­serve both the health and ed­u­ca­tion of our fu­ture lead­ers- in that ex­pressed or­der of pri­or­i­ty. In fur­ther­ance of this man­date, the fol­low­ing de­ci­sions have been tak­en re­gard­ing the op­er­a­tions of schools in Term II 2021/22:

Post-sec­ondary and Ter­tiary stu­dents will be al­lowed to at­tend phys­i­cal class­es for teach­ing and prac­ti­cals from Jan­u­ary 2022.

All stu­dents of Forms 4-6 or equiv­a­lent will at­tend school phys­i­cal­ly for teach­ing class­es, prac­ti­cals and school-based as­sess­ments from Jan­u­ary 3rd, 2022.

Stu­dents of Forms 1-3 or equiv­a­lent are re­quired to re­main en­gaged in re­mote learn­ing in Jan­u­ary 2022, al­low­ing schools to plan for their re­turn to phys­i­cal at­ten­dance in Feb­ru­ary 2022, on a ro­ta­tion­al ba­sis.

Pri­ma­ry Schools will con­tin­ue to op­er­ate re­mote­ly in Term II, with the ex­cep­tion of Stan­dard 5 stu­dents, who will at­tend school phys­i­cal­ly from Feb­ru­ary 2022.

The SEA will be held on March 31st, 2022. De­lay­ing this ex­am, as was done in 2020 and 2021, re­sults in many chal­lenges; the ma­jor ones be­ing the myr­i­ad dif­fi­cul­ties of ad­min­is­ter­ing CXC and SEA ex­ams con­cur­rent­ly; and the un­cer­tain­ty of stu­dents with re­spect to trans­fer ap­pli­ca­tions and the re­sults of SEA re­views- which may re­sult in them switch­ing schools while al­ready en­rolled in Form 1.

EC­CE Stu­dents, along with Stan­dards 1-4 will re­sume phys­i­cal at­ten­dance, on a ro­ta­tion­al ba­sis, in Term III (April 2022).

Though we are forg­ing ahead to­wards nor­mal­cy, we must be mind­ful that we are still op­er­at­ing in a pan­dem­ic, and all de­ci­sions must be con­tex­tu­al­ized by this re­al­i­ty.

These pro­posed plans are pred­i­cat­ed on the health cir­cum­stances of Trinidad and To­ba­go, and fur­ther de­tails of phys­i­cal at­ten­dance will be re­leased af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with stake­hold­ers.

The Gov­ern­ment holds out to par­ents that COVID-19 vac­cines are avail­able, and con­tin­ue to be the best pro­tec­tion against be­com­ing griev­ous­ly ill if stu­dents con­tract the virus. Par­ents are there­fore strong­ly en­cour­aged to vac­ci­nate their chil­dren as they re­turn to the class­room.

The Min­istry lauds the ef­forts of all staff, stake­hold­ers, par­ents, teach­ers, mid­dle man­age­ment, and Prin­ci­pals in meet­ing the needs of our stu­dents in these chal­leng­ing times of the pan­dem­ic. Our con­tin­ued co­op­er­a­tion and com­mit­ment dur­ing this tran­si­tionary pe­ri­od will re­sult in the best out­come pos­si­ble for our stu­dents of Trinidad and To­ba­go. The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion takes this op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­vey to all cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go our best wish­es for the hol­i­day sea­son and the New Year 2022.