Sto­ries by DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) said it was blind­sided by the an­nounce­ment by For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne on Fri­day that mi­grant chil­dren will be in­te­grat­ed in­to the school sys­tem.

Browne was speak­ing dur­ing a hu­man­i­tar­i­an break­fast se­ries when he said the gov­ern­ment has been mak­ing moves to ab­sorb chil­dren in­to pri­ma­ry school lev­el from Sep­tem­ber.

How­ev­er, TTUTA pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin told Guardian Me­dia that there was no con­sul­ta­tion with his or­gan­i­sa­tion.

“TTUTA was tak­en by sur­prise at the an­nounce­ment. TTUTA was not in any way sig­nalled to have con­sul­ta­tion or even asked to give some in­put in it,” he said.

Lum Kin not­ed that while T&T is a sig­na­to­ry to the UN Con­ven­tion on the Rights of the Child, there are sev­er­al is­sues that need to be ironed out be­fore mi­grants and lo­cals study to­geth­er at any lev­el. This in­cludes en­sur­ing that stu­dents present the nec­es­sary pa­per­work to join the re­spec­tive in­sti­tu­tions.

“The mi­grants should not dis­place cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go when it comes to spaces. Sec­ond­ly, if the schools are go­ing to take them, we hope that there will not be an ex­pan­sion of the ra­tio of stu­dents to teach­ers,” he added.

At the in­fant lev­el, there should not be more than 25 stu­dents to one teacher. Sim­i­lar­ly, at the pri­ma­ry school lev­el, the max­i­mum is 30 pupils to one teacher and the same goes for sec­ondary school lev­el.

More­over, the TTUTA pres­i­dent lament­ed that there are not enough teach­ers or re­sources to make this pos­si­ble.

“There are a num­ber of schools that do not have the req­ui­site num­ber of teach­ers on the es­tab­lish­ment. The oth­er is­sue has to do with re­sources that are giv­en to the school and ed­u­ca­tors. And al­so, the con­sid­er­a­tion of the lan­guage and com­mu­ni­ca­tion bar­ri­ers that may ex­ist. With­out the req­ui­site pro­vi­sion of re­sources, it puts a great strain on the sys­tem, the ad­min­is­tra­tors, the ed­u­ca­tors in the par­tic­u­lar school,” he said.

De­nom­i­na­tion­al Boards on mi­grant chil­dren

The Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS) has ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of seek­ing favour with the pop­u­la­tion amid the elec­tion sea­son by sug­gest­ing that mi­grants be in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the school sys­tem in two months.

Dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, SDMS sec­re­tary gen­er­al Vi­jay Ma­haraj said this can­not be brought to fruition that soon.

“They are play­ing pol­i­tics with this for the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions. They can­not have this ready for Sep­tem­ber be­cause we don’t even have teach­ers ready for our own chil­dren for Sep­tem­ber. I am 14 teach­ers short for Sep­tem­ber,” he said.

Ma­haraj agreed that mi­grant chil­dren ought to be ed­u­cat­ed but he called for more re­sources to be al­lo­cat­ed to schools to as­sist.

“It’s all well and good to talk. Are we tak­ing? Yes, we’re tak­ing but where are we putting them? I putting them in the yard to run around? Where are the fa­cil­i­ties, where are the re­sources, where is the fund­ing, where are the desks?” he asked.

“We are tak­ing chil­dren who fit all cat­e­gories and are qual­i­fied to en­ter our schools just like any­body else. But we don’t have teach­ers,” he said.

Ma­haraj fur­ther not­ed that he will be tak­ing the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion to court, like the Catholic Ed­u­ca­tion Board of Man­age­ment (CEBM) and Pres­by­ter­ian Board of Ed­u­ca­tion, over staffing is­sues.

“That is why we’re go­ing to court. How are we go­ing to take these chil­dren if we can’t even take our own chil­dren?” he asked.

Pres­i­dent of the CEBM Sharon Man­groo held a dif­fer­ent opin­ion, say­ing this was long over­due since her or­gan­i­sa­tion, had been clam­our­ing for the last four years.

She al­so as­sured that lo­gis­ti­cal is­sues are be­ing worked out.

“Spaces have al­ready been iden­ti­fied so no lo­cal child is go­ing to be dis­placed. These are schools that al­ready had spaces. These are schools in which the prin­ci­pals and teach­ers are will­ing to re­ceive mi­grant chil­dren. The schools have, through UNICEF fund­ing, re­ceived re­sources such as fur­ni­ture, pho­to­copy­ing ma­chines, air-con­di­tion­ing units, san­i­ta­tion equip­ment. The teach­ers have re­ceived train­ing in teach­ing Eng­lish as a sec­ond lan­guage. And many of the teach­ers from those schools as well as oth­er schools have re­ceived train­ing in iden­ti­fy­ing learn­ing chal­lenges and be­ing able to ad­dress them. So, we’ve been work­ing be­hind the scenes for four years to pre­pare for this day,” she said.

Man­groo fur­ther ac­knowl­edged that many mi­grants do not have the cor­rect doc­u­men­ta­tion from their home coun­try, which can pose a prob­lem. De­spite this, she said most of the mem­bers of the As­so­ci­a­tion of De­nom­i­na­tion­al Boards of Ed­u­ca­tion have agreed to take on-board the stu­dents.

“Many of the oth­er boards are very will­ing to ac­com­mo­date stu­dents pro­vid­ing they have the space, and they get the re­sources,” she said.

Mean­while, chair­man of the Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry School Board of Ed­u­ca­tion Vikram Ram­lal said the as­so­ci­a­tion is will­ing to ac­cept mi­grants in keep­ing with the gov­ern­ment’s pol­i­cy. But he said it is not that sim­ple.

“Teach­ers and prin­ci­pals will need to be ex­posed to train­ing in teach­ing and speak­ing Span­ish. Ex­po­sure is re­quired for prepa­ra­tion with re­spect to Eng­lish,” he said.

Ram­lal al­so crit­i­cised the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion (MoE) for fail­ing to pro­vide re­sources for the cit­i­zens who are al­ready in the sys­tem.

“The pri­ma­ry schools es­pe­cial­ly and all our sec­ondary schools are starved for re­sources. A ma­jor prob­lem is fur­ni­ture. Most of our schools have not had fur­ni­ture for years and to bring in a large co­hort of chil­dren from else­where with­out pro­vid­ing staff and fur­ni­ture will be cre­at­ing more prob­lems with an al­ready over­bur­dened sys­tem,” he quipped.

NPTA: Op­por­tu­ni­ty to teach stu­dents an­oth­er lan­guage

Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Par­ent Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) Kevin David saw the in­clu­sion of mi­grant chil­dren in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to teach young peo­ple an­oth­er lan­guage.

He said this needs to be en­cour­aged in schools. David was speak­ing at the NPTA’s first fam­i­ly day at the Cipri­ani Labour Col­lege on Sat­ur­day.

“We cer­tain­ly do look for­ward to em­brac­ing those stu­dents and, based up­on the cul­ture, that in it­self may be able to as­sist our chil­dren in learn­ing Span­ish. Some­thing that we re­al­ly do need to en­cour­age with­in our school sys­tem,” he said.

Min­is­ter of State in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian, who was al­so at the event, said these dis­cus­sions are still un­der­way ahead of the new school term.

She added that “every­body de­serves a chance and an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be ed­u­cat­ed.”

Ac­cord­ing to Mor­ris-Ju­lian, the MoE will work with all stake­hold­ers on the way for­ward.