On­line class­es for un­vac­ci­nat­ed stu­dents of Forms Four, Five and Six have been ter­mi­nat­ed at the Bar­rack­pore West Sec­ondary School, trig­ger­ing protests by par­ents on Tues­day.

Vice pres­i­dent of the school’s PTA Na­dia Aligour said in a memo dat­ed Oc­to­ber 12, prin­ci­pal Ed­ward Be­har­ry in­di­cat­ed that on­line class­es will no longer be con­duct­ed and any vac­ci­nat­ed child who does not re­port for phys­i­cal class­es will be marked as ab­sent.

Say­ing par­ents did not know the ba­sis of this de­ci­sion, Aligour called on the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry to in­ter­vene so that stu­dents will not suf­fer. She al­so ap­pealed to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) to work to re­solve the mat­ter.

“We had a PTA meet­ing on Fri­day and the prin­ci­pal said there will be live stream­ing for the kids but some stu­dents are not re­ceiv­ing any work. My child is in Form 4 busi­ness. They did not give us a rea­son why they are dis­con­tin­u­ing on­line,” she said.

Aligour added, “The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion said vac­ci­nat­ed stu­dents should be out in school. The prin­ci­pal says there will be live stream­ing rather than on­line class­es. What will be the stance of our chil­dren? How would they fa­cil­i­tate our chil­dren who are at home?” 

She said about 80 vac­ci­nat­ed stu­dents came out on Mon­day and last week there were about 40 stu­dents present. 

“This school has over 700 chil­dren so most of the chil­dren are un­vac­ci­nat­ed and are at a dis­ad­van­tage,” Aligour said.

She said on­line class­es have been work­ing be­fore and teach­ers were cop­ing. 

“To TTUTA, I would like them to come up with some plan in place to fa­cil­i­tate the kids. They are suf­fer­ing. I know it is chal­leng­ing for the teach­ers but our chil­dren need their ed­u­ca­tion,” she said.

Mean­while, par­ent Ed­ward Mood­ie said live stream­ing did not make any sense as the in­ter­net con­nec­tiv­i­ty was poor.

“You have breached the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of our chil­dren and breached the Unit­ed Na­tions Char­ter on ed­u­ca­tion. It is a fail­ure. The in­ter­net providers you are mak­ing so much mon­ey. Every child, poor, rich or in be­tween had to get da­ta for phone. Did you do a price re­duc­tion?” Mood­ie asked.

He added, “Have you looked at rur­al schools like these and boost­ed up the sig­nal. You all are so com­mer­cial and hun­gry for mon­ey. 

The in­ter­net is poor and hor­ri­ble. In­ter­net is drop­ping and ed­u­ca­tion has failed right now.”

An­oth­er par­ent Mis­sy Arneaud said, “I would like my son to have an ed­u­ca­tion. The teach­ers have been work­ing with our chil­dren. They are ex­cel­lent. Mr Be­har­ry has done a lot through the COVID to help chil­dren. How­ev­er, be­cause the min­istry has said on­ly vac­ci­nat­ed chil­dren can at­tend school so it makes it dif­fi­cult for the un­vac­ci­nat­ed ones. Even though the Min­is­ter said she has not stopped on­line class­es, it is a prob­lem for the teach­ers.”

When asked whether prin­ci­pals could take a de­ci­sion to stop on­line class­es, Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said “The Min­istry guide­lines do not spec­i­fy that the teach­ing has to be syn­chro­nous on­line ses­sions which I be­lieve is the is­sue.”

She said, “Dis­cus­sions were held with stake­hold­ers last week, at which the chal­lenges of the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion were dis­cussed. While some schools are quite set­tled, oth­ers have had great dif­fi­cul­ty deal­ing with the hy­brid sys­tem.”

The Min­is­ter added, “Rec­om­men­da­tions were made, and the de­ci­sions tak­en in the in­ter­est of the safe­ty and ed­u­ca­tion­al con­ti­nu­ity of all the na­tion’s chil­dren will soon be com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the pub­lic.”