SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

For sev­en years, Gen­e­sis Mendez and her com­mon-law hus­band, An­to­nio Escalona, have made Trinidad their home af­ter flee­ing Venezuela for a bet­ter life.

When they ar­rived in 2019, their daugh­ter Ash­ley was on­ly three.

With her daugh­ter now ten, Mendez has been fight­ing tooth and nail to get her first­born in­to a pri­ma­ry school.

Last year, Ash­ley was not ac­cept­ed in­to the Tal­paro RC School by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion (MOE), even though space was avail­able.

A new school term be­gan on Sep­tem­ber 7, and Ash­ley is still await­ing en­rol­ment.

As Mendez’s frus­tra­tion grows, the hope she once held for her daugh­ter to get an ed­u­ca­tion is slow­ly fad­ing.

“It’s re­al­ly sad,” Mendez said when asked how she felt about her daugh­ter be­ing de­nied an ed­u­ca­tion for over two years.

Ed­u­ca­tion is a uni­ver­sal right for every child.

“Every day, she telling me, Mam­my, when am I go­ing to school.”

Un­able to pro­vide an an­swer, Mendez said it breaks her heart.

“I just want her to get an ed­u­ca­tion.”

Mendez said Ash­ley is ea­ger to learn, in­ter­act with chil­dren her age and be in a school en­vi­ron­ment.

“As a lit­tle girl, she wants that ex­pe­ri­ence, you know...to be in school.”

In Sep­tem­ber 2024, the first co­hort of mi­grant chil­dren from Venezuela en­tered the na­tion­al pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem in T&T.

At first, 60 of the 148 chil­dren who ap­plied for en­rol­ment met the ad­mis­sion cri­te­ria.

In 2025, the num­ber of Venezue­lan mi­grant chil­dren in T&T’s schools re­mained sim­i­lar to the 2024 fig­ure.

For this new term, it’s un­clear how many Venezue­lan mi­grant chil­dren were suc­cess­ful.

Of the 16,523 Venezue­lan mi­grants who reg­is­tered in 2021, at least 4,400 chil­dren were sup­posed to be in school.

Many of these chil­dren use on­line plat­forms and learn­ing tools such as Note Mas­ter and Daware.

In Ju­ly 2024, Mendez filled out an ac­knowl­edge­ment slip from the MOE for Ash­ley to get in­to ei­ther San Raphael RC, Tal­paro RC or Mal­ick RC schools.

The slip, signed by a “school su­per­vi­sor”, stat­ed that the par­ent spoke to the prin­ci­pals of San Raphael and Tal­paro RC schools, who in­di­cat­ed there were spaces avail­able.

A Feb­ru­ary 12, 2025, let­ter ad­dressed to the MOE Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary re­gard­ing the “ad­mis­sion of a for­eign na­tion­al” at Tal­paro RC School ad­vised that Mendez had vis­it­ed the school in Sep­tem­ber 2024 and re­quest­ed that Ash­ley be ad­mit­ted in­to Stan­dard Three.

The doc­u­ment stat­ed that Mendez pre­sent­ed a 2024 ac­knowl­edge­ment slip signed by a school su­per­vi­sor and had al­ready ap­plied for a stu­dent per­mit for her daugh­ter. The let­ter con­firmed that space was avail­able at the school and that they were will­ing to ac­cept Ash­ley up­on re­ceipt of her stu­dent per­mit, oth­er doc­u­ments and a di­rec­tive from the MOE. Mendez said that last year, the MOE lost Ash­ley’s doc­u­ments.

In May 2025, she sub­mit­ted a new ap­pli­ca­tion but said they re­ceived no feed­back from the MOE.

To com­pound mat­ters, Mendez said the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty nev­er is­sued a stu­dent per­mit to Ash­ley. Hav­ing reg­is­tered as a mi­grant un­der the Mi­grant Reg­is­tra­tion Ex­er­cise since 2018, Mendez said she was at her wits’ end.

An mi­grant per­mit al­lows Mendez to live and work legal­ly in T&T.

Mendez has two oth­er chil­dren who were born in Trinidad.

Her six-year-old son at­tends Brazil RC Pri­ma­ry School.

She pays $400 a month for her four-year-old daugh­ter to at­tend a pri­vate pre-school.

Ash­ley is home­schooled, at a cost to Mendez.

“I want my chil­dren to do bet­ter than me.”

Mendez jug­gles two jobs, one of which is clean­ing hous­es, while Escalona works on a farm.

Their com­bined month­ly salaries of $8,000 cov­er rent, food, trans­porta­tion and tu­ition.

Ad­vo­cates: Cy­cle of pover­ty con­tin­ues

Ang­ie Ram­nar­ine of the La Ro­maine Mi­grant Sup­port Group told Guardian Me­dia that there’s a pos­si­bil­i­ty that few­er par­ents have reg­is­tered their chil­dren this year.

She said that, due to job scarci­ty, mi­grants are find­ing it hard­er to send their chil­dren to school.

Ram­nar­ine said oth­er fac­tors that dis­suade Venezue­lan par­ents from en­rolling their chil­dren in schools in­clude the cost of trans­porta­tion, uni­forms and books.

They are al­so un­able to com­mu­ni­cate be­cause of the lan­guage bar­ri­er.

“Their pri­or­i­ty is pay­ing their rent and buy­ing food. Their salaries are small. It’s all about sur­vival. Many of them have tem­po­rary jobs and are strug­gling,” Ram­nar­ine said.

“Or some­times, the par­ents de­cide they are go­ing back to Venezuela…that life is too hard. Some par­ents them­selves are part of a cy­cle of pover­ty and il­lit­er­a­cy be­cause they grew up un­der Chavez and Maduro regimes.”

Oth­er par­ents pre­fer to take their chil­dren to their work­places rather than ed­u­cate them.

“They start groom­ing them in­to the work cul­ture ear­ly… from the age of 14…15 and up.”

Ram­nar­ine al­so ad­mit­ted that dozens of mi­grant chil­dren who live in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties have not been able to ac­cess ed­u­ca­tion for var­i­ous rea­sons.

“We lo­cal peo­ple face hu­mon­gous bu­reau­cra­cy. Can you imag­ine what it is like for these mi­grants not hav­ing the same lan­guage?”

In some in­stances, Ram­nar­ine said Venezue­lan mi­grants are placed in un­der­per­form­ing pri­ma­ry schools, as the pres­ti­gious schools are over­sub­scribed.

“There are one or two par­ents I know who would cir­cum­vent that and pay for their chil­dren to go to a pri­vate pri­ma­ry school.”

The fees are up­wards of $3,000 a term.

Mean­while, hu­man rights ac­tivist Sofia Figueroa-Leon said she knows sev­er­al Venezue­lans who left Trinidad in the last two years be­cause their chil­dren were not ac­cept­ed in­to schools.

She men­tioned two boys aged eight and 10 whose par­ents ap­plied to get them in­to a pri­ma­ry school in 2024 but are still await­ing word from the MOE.

The par­ents, who came to Trinidad in 2019, have been pay­ing for the boys to at­tend a pri­vate school in Mar­aval since last year.

“It’s hard for the par­ents be­cause they work every day sell­ing food in St James af­ter 7 pm. The boys’ moth­er al­so cleans hous­es.”

On the flip side, Figueroa-Leon said oth­er mi­grant chil­dren drop out of school be­cause they can­not cope.

“They can­not read. Why? Be­cause they have learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties. And that has not been ad­dressed.”

She said chil­dren who are di­ag­nosed with At­ten­tion Deficit Hy­per­ac­tiv­i­ty Dis­or­der (AD­HD) are called “dunce and slow” by their peers.

They are taunt­ed, forc­ing them to leave the school sys­tem.

“It’s re­al­ly, re­al­ly dis­heart­en­ing that chil­dren are still be­ing de­nied ed­u­ca­tion in this day and age. We can­not con­tin­ue to op­er­ate like we are in the dark ages when we are not.”

Figueroa-Leon said deny­ing a child an ed­u­ca­tion re­flects bad­ly on our coun­try.

“It’s a re­flec­tion that the coun­try is not will­ing to help oth­ers.”

On Sep­tem­ber 8, the Sun­day Guardian sent a list of ques­tions to Vish­ham Ram­saywack, se­nior cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cer at the MOE, but he did not re­spond.

Reg­is­tra­tion process

In Jan­u­ary, the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty launched an MRF.

The MRF was im­ple­ment­ed in three phas­es as part of a process to reg­is­ter mi­grants.

Adult ap­pli­cants were re­quired to pay a $700 reg­is­tra­tion fee.

At the end of the reg­is­tra­tion pe­ri­od in March, the min­istry re­ceived 29,276 ap­pli­ca­tions rep­re­sent­ing more than 60 na­tion­al­i­ties.

Of these ap­pli­cants, 23,342 were Venezue­lan na­tion­als, with 16,829 be­ing chil­dren.

Fol­low­ing the clo­sure of the reg­is­tra­tion process, some Venezue­lan mi­grants com­plained that they were still await­ing an up­date from the min­istry on their MRF process.

In­quiry in­to treat­ment of mi­grants

A 2023 Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee re­port on Hu­man Rights, Equal­i­ty and Di­ver­si­ty on the in­quiry in­to the treat­ment of mi­grants, with spe­cif­ic fo­cus on the rights to ed­u­ca­tion, em­ploy­ment and pro­tec­tion from sex­u­al ex­ploita­tion, chaired by Dr Mo­hammed Yunus Ibrahim, not­ed that many of the mi­grant chil­dren in need of ed­u­ca­tion were, in fact, not at­tend­ing school.

The prob­lem per­sist­ed par­tic­u­lar­ly at pri­ma­ry schools.

The com­mit­tee rec­om­mend­ed that the MOE en­sure that mi­grant chil­dren face no stum­bling blocks when reg­is­ter­ing at schools.

The Ro­man Catholic Arch­dio­cese of Port-of-Spain af­firmed that there were suf­fi­cient places to ad­mit Venezue­lan mi­grant chil­dren reg­is­tered since 2019.

Twen­ty RC schools had been pro­vid­ed with spe­cif­ic train­ing in prepa­ra­tion for their ad­mis­sion.

The Arch­dio­cese com­plained to the com­mit­tee that they had not re­ceived a re­sponse from the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, as of May 2023, to ap­pli­ca­tions dat­ing back to April 2020 for 150 stu­dent per­mits for Venezue­lan mi­grant chil­dren.

In the re­port, the com­mit­tee rec­om­mend­ed “with re­gard to ed­u­ca­tion­al/leg­is­la­tion pol­i­cy that a stu­dent per­mit waiv­er for chil­dren of all per­sons in need of pro­tec­tion (asy­lum seek­ers, refugees, all per­sons from Venezuela) as well as mi­grants, that grants ac­cess to any ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tion with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.”

The MOE high­light­ed that one chal­lenge to ed­u­ca­tion for mi­grant chil­dren was meet­ing the re­quire­ments of the Im­mi­gra­tion Act.

“The MOE’s poli­cies align with the said Act. As such, the ex­ist­ing pol­i­cy is that mi­grant chil­dren can­not oc­cu­py places at pub­lic schools that would oth­er­wise go to T&T na­tion­als,” the re­port stat­ed.

The Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty ac­knowl­edged the need for leg­isla­tive and pol­i­cy changes to fa­cil­i­tate ac­cess to places in T&T’s school sys­tem for all mi­grants.

“This need arose giv­en that un­doc­u­ment­ed mi­grants are not per­mit­ted ac­cess to school un­der ex­ist­ing laws and reg­u­la­tions. The pre­vail­ing rules there­fore mean that there are in­deed gaps in mi­grant chil­dren’s en­joy­ment of the right to ac­cess ed­u­ca­tion with­out dis­crim­i­na­tion on the ba­sis of ori­gin in ac­cor­dance with the Con­ven­tion on the Rights of the Child,” the re­port stat­ed.

Be­tween 2019 and 2023, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 3,000 stu­dent per­mits were is­sued to mi­grant chil­dren.

As of May 2023, mi­grant chil­dren from 33 coun­tries had ac­cess to ed­u­ca­tion.