All fa­cil­i­ties are in place for Mon­day’s phased re­open­ing of schools in keep­ing with COVID-19 pro­to­cols.

Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­lay gave the as­sur­ance in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day as she said that most schools would have had sani­ti­sa­tion sta­tions in­stalled last year and it’s al­so ex­pect­ed that trans­port arrange­ments will be put in place for stu­dents from Mon­day on­wards.

Stu­dents in Forms 4 to 6 would be back in the class­rooms on Mon­day.

Gads­by-Dol­ly ex­plained, “Most schools would have had sani­ti­sa­tion sta­tions in­stalled in 2020 to ac­com­mo­date CXC and SEA ex­am­i­na­tions in Ju­ly and Au­gust 2020.

“As a mat­ter of pri­or­i­ty, all sec­ondary schools which have in­di­cat­ed the need for ad­di­tion­al or re­place­ment sta­tions have been sup­plied with sani­ti­sa­tion sta­tions.”

She said San Juan South and Five Rivers Sec­ondary schools will be out­fit­ted be­fore Mon­day.

Pri­ma­ry schools and Ear­ly Child­hood Care Cen­tres which re­quire ad­di­tion­al sani­ti­sa­tion sta­tions are cur­rent­ly be­ing out­fit­ted with this al­so.

She added re­pairs to the Cou­va West Sec­ondary school’s wa­ter and sew­er pumps have al­so been com­plet­ed af­ter they were dam­aged by an elec­tri­cal pow­er surge. She said the school has a wa­ter sup­ply for sani­ti­sa­tion.

But dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, the min­is­ter ad­mit­ted that in­fra­struc­tur­al is­sues may arise at some sec­ondary shools once stu­dents re­turn es­pe­cial­ly since the build­ings have not been utilised in months.

“School re­pair is a con­tin­u­ous and on­go­ing process,” the min­is­ter told Guardian Me­dia.

She said that her min­istry and the Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (MTS) will be on the alert to en­sure that re­ports from prin­ci­pals about school re­pairs will be dealt with ex­pe­di­tious­ly.

Speak­ing in Par­lia­ment, the Min­is­ter said her min­istry al­so recog­nis­es the need to pro­vide trans­port for stu­dents and as such had re­quest­ed da­ta on the num­ber of stu­dents re­quir­ing this ser­vice.

“There­fore the in­for­ma­tion re­quest­ed re­gard­ing the num­ber of stu­dents to be trans­port­ed has come in from schools this week and the num­ber of ve­hi­cles re­quired for trans­port based on so­cial dis­tanc­ing pro­to­cols is now be­ing fi­nalised by the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion,” she said.

“It’s ex­pect­ed that arrange­ments will be put in place for school trans­porta­tion to be­gin dur­ing the week of Feb­ru­ary 8-12,” she added.

On Mon­day, stu­dents in Forms four to six Sec­ondary school stu­dents will re­open us­ing a hy­brid sys­tem which means on­line class­es will con­tin­ue and stu­dents will re­port to school for the com­ple­tion of Prac­ti­cals, SBAs and In­ter­nal As­sess­ments.

On­line class­es for all stu­dents re­sumed in Sep­tem­ber 2020.

The phased re­open­ing, once all goes well, should con­tin­ue on April 12 when schools would be re­opened for Stan­dards four and five stu­dents.