An­na-Lisa Paul

Talks be­tween the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion (MOE) and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) to dis­cuss a num­ber of per­ti­nent is­sues, came to abrupt end Tues­day soon af­ter TTUTA re­sist­ed a pro­pos­al to ex­tend the school term by one week for teach­ers alone.

TTUTA Pres­i­dent An­to­nia Tekah-De Fre­itas spoke to Guardian Me­dia af­ter the 8 am meet­ing end­ed at 9.20 am.

In­di­cat­ing TTUTA was in sup­port of the five-week clo­sure which was ex­tend­ed to in­clude the two-week East­er va­ca­tion pe­ri­od, Tekah-De Fre­itas said, “We are sat­is­fied the State and the Min­istry act­ed pru­dent­ly in terms of clos­ing schools for the pe­ri­od they did, to min­i­mize the com­mu­ni­ty spread. That is not an is­sue.”

She said, “When the Min­is­ter be­gan speak­ing about the pos­si­ble post­pone­ment of SEA in­to the new term, pos­si­bly in­to May, that too was ac­cept­able to TTUTA.

“We do be­lieve that giv­en the fact, there will be need for some readi­ness and prepa­ra­tion to be done when school re­opens on April 20 and that kind of post­pone­ment is fea­si­ble.”

She said in years gone by, the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the SEA ex­am has been done in May so there is no is­sue re­gard­ing the readi­ness of stu­dents for sec­ondary school.

Tekah-De Fre­itas said, “Our is­sue arose when the Min­is­ter be­gan to talk about an ex­ten­sion of the term, not to do any­thing with the stu­dents per say, but be­cause the teach­ers were out.”

“So with teach­ers be­ing out es­sen­tial­ly for five weeks, it ap­pears as if the min­istry was not pre­pared that they should be out for five weeks and they were try­ing to take back the time they sent us out for.”

The fired-up TTUTA pres­i­dent said, “We did not put our­selves on this leave, we didn’t shut down schools. It ap­pears the min­istry was try­ing to take back that time and there­fore, a propo­si­tion was put to TTUTA for the term to be ex­tend­ed by one week dur­ing which time the teach­ers would come out. It was not clear whether or not stu­dents would be com­ing out dur­ing that one week.”

Tekah-De Fre­itas said when they pressed to the MOE to say why, “We were sim­ply told in the in­ter­est of ed­u­ca­tion.”

Asked when the ad­di­tion­al week was be­ing pro­posed for, she said, “We didn’t even get that far be­cause when TTUTA said we can­not ac­cept such a propo­si­tion be­cause there has to be dis­cus­sions and ne­go­ti­a­tions with our mem­bers, the Min­is­ter end­ed the meet­ing.”

Re­fer­ring to the sug­ges­tion as an im­po­si­tion as op­posed to a propo­si­tion, Tekah-De Fre­itas said, “The Min­is­ter could not even iden­ti­fy the dates when they want­ed to do that ac­tion.”

Asked if TTUTA was op­posed to the ex­ten­sion of time gen­er­al­ly as valu­able teach­ing and learn­ing time was be­ing lost, Tekah-De Fre­itas said dis­cus­sions would need to be held with its’ mem­ber­ship be­fore un­der­tak­ing such a com­mit­ment.

How­ev­er, she stressed, “You can­not im­pose a penal­ty on teach­ers be­cause we did not send our­selves out of school.”

Min­utes af­ter in­di­cat­ing their un­will­ing­ness to en­ter­tain fur­ther dis­cus­sions along these lines, Tekah-De Fre­itas said Gar­cia end­ed the meet­ing which meant no de­fin­i­tive de­ci­sions had been made re­gard­ing SEA.

In­di­cat­ing that teach­ers re­mained com­mit­ted to their charges as many per­sons were us­ing so­cial me­dia to up­load links and sites for stu­dents to ac­cess on­line class­es to en­sure learn­ing con­ti­nu­ity, Tekah-De Fre­itas said, “Sec­ondary school teach­ers are par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned about the marks for CSEC sub­jects that would have al­ready been mod­er­at­ed and the sub­mis­sion of those marks, so they are go­ing to be work­ing from home on that al­so.”

“It is not to say teach­ers have downed tools and dropped every­thing. Our teach­ers con­tin­ue to in­ter­act with stu­dents with­out be­ing asked. The on­ly thing is that they are not phys­i­cal­ly present at the plant.”

Urg­ing mem­bers to con­tin­ue to ob­serve strict hy­giene pro­ce­dures, Tekah-De Fre­itas said, “What we want from CXC right now is the dead­lines for the sub­mis­sion of CSEC marks ex­tend­ed, be­cause the cur­rent struc­ture is one where CXC im­pos­es a penal­ty for the late sub­mis­sion of marks but this is not some­thing that is any­one’s fault and it is af­fect­ing oth­er coun­tries in the re­gion.”

She called for CXC to waive those late fees in the first in­stance and al­so push back the dead­line for sub­mis­sion of marks for CSEC stu­dents which is usu­al­ly done dur­ing the end of March in­to ear­ly April.

TTUTA said they stand ready to meet with the min­istry when­ev­er they in­di­cate.

At­tempts to reach Gar­cia for a re­sponse proved fu­tile.