Jesse Ramdeo

Two years af­ter the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic forced the clo­sure of schools and drove stu­dents to on­line learn­ing, stu­dents and par­ents alike heaved a sigh of re­lief when phys­i­cal class­es re­sumed for all on Tues­day.

How­ev­er, de­spite as­sur­ances from the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry that all was set for a smooth re­turn to class­es, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) has re­port­ed some in­stances of dis­rup­tions.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, TTUTA third vice pres­i­dent Dar­ren Lee Him said he was dis­ap­point­ed in the min­istry for fail­ing to en­sure the nec­es­sary works and in­fra­struc­tur­al ac­com­mo­da­tions were made for the start of the new term.

Lee Him said re­ports from school of­fi­cials across the sev­en ed­u­ca­tion dis­tricts sug­gest there were some hic­cups.

“Some of the chal­lenges were the lack of fur­ni­ture in some schools, al­so, whilst the School Feed­ing Pro­gramme re­sumed, the school trans­port did not re­sume so that caused a prob­lem. I would have vis­it­ed some ar­eas in the north­east­ern dis­trict and head­ing in­to south­east­ern and the per­cent­age turnout would have been like 40 per cent, 50 per cent in some of the schools.”

Ac­cord­ing to Lee Him, school of­fi­cials al­so re­port­ed that par­ents opt­ed not to send their chil­dren be­cause they were un­able to af­ford school books and oth­er ad­di­tion­al items that have be­come a sta­ple on the book list fol­low­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“Some par­ents did not send their chil­dren out to­day be­cause they were not able to buy the uni­forms and books in time, some par­ents have lost their jobs and as such are de­pend­ing on oth­er per­sons to as­sist them with re­spect to ob­tain­ing these ne­ces­si­ties.”

TTUTA trea­sur­er Cuth­bert Joseph al­so said teach­ers at the Gloster Lodge Mora­vian School were forced to con­duct class­es in what they de­scribed as “un­ten­able cir­cum­stances.”

Joseph said, “There is no fur­ni­ture for teach­ers, there are some old desks, there are no chairs in the class­rooms, in most class­rooms, we have in­ad­e­quate seat­ing for the num­ber of stu­dents as­signed to the class.”

Ac­cord­ing to a state­ment is­sued by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion yes­ter­day, crit­i­cal re­pair works were too ex­ten­sive to be com­plet­ed in the re­quired time frame on ten schools. As a re­sult, it said stu­dents in the af­fect­ed schools will re­main on a ro­ta­tion sched­ule un­til works are com­plet­ed lat­er this week.

The min­istry not­ed that ac­cord­ing to da­ta sub­mit­ted, there was a 52 per cent turnout at EC­CE cen­tres, 64 per cent pri­ma­ry and 67 per cent at sec­ondary schools. A to­tal of 121,609 stu­dents were present through­out 820 schools, it not­ed.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly not­ed that the staff of the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices unit would be con­duct­ing ses­sions in all schools aimed at mak­ing the tran­si­tion seam­less for stu­dents.

The Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty has al­so part­nered with the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry to pro­vide 36 of­fi­cers to as­sist the SSS unit across se­lect­ed sec­ondary schools.

Mean­while, TTUTA’s To­ba­go of­fi­cer Bradon Roberts al­so ex­pressed con­cern over the lack of readi­ness for the re­sump­tion of phys­i­cal class­es on the is­land.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Roberts said he has re­ceived re­ports of sev­er­al schools with­out ad­e­quate in­fra­struc­ture to ac­com­mo­date stu­dents and staff. Un­like Trinidad, schools in To­ba­go re­mained closed yes­ter­day to fa­cil­i­tate East­er Tues­day ac­tiv­i­ties.

Roberts said he was con­fused over why the au­thor­i­ties failed to put mea­sures in place to en­sure a smooth re­open­ing of schools and la­belled the re­ports as un­ac­cept­able.

“Teach­ers went out through­out the en­tire week­end to get their class­rooms ready but there isn’t any fur­ni­ture for teach­ers to or­gan­ise for their chil­dren to come, so I don’t know what hap­pens to­mor­row (to­day) when all these stu­dents come in. I was hop­ing the di­vi­sion will pro­cure fur­ni­ture and so forth and what I’m sur­prised about is the re­ports some teach­ers re­ceived,” he said.

A se­nior of­fi­cial at­tached to the Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion, Re­search and Tech­nol­o­gy con­firmed the ac­qui­si­tion of fur­ni­ture re­mained a chal­lenge and ef­forts were on­go­ing to en­sure the is­sue was ironed out in time for to­day.

Con­cerned Par­ents’ Move­ment head Clarence Men­doza mean­while ex­plained that his mem­ber­ship was gen­er­al­ly sat­is­fied with Tues­day’s school re­open­ing and promised to keep a keen eye to en­sure safe­ty pro­to­cols were ad­hered to.

“Based on the open­ing of schools to­day, it was a suc­cess, the chil­dren who would have gone out to school for the first time, they were hap­py to be out there. Some par­ents are still hold­ing back be­cause of the fear of COVID-19, so we have seen where ab­sen­teeism did hap­pen, but all in all, it was a good day,” Men­doza said.