The pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) is ex­press­ing scep­ti­cism over Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young’s cam­paign pledge to re­move Val­ue Added Tax (VAT) from school uni­forms if re-elect­ed.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Mar­tin Lum Kin not­ed that while the tax re­lief may of­fer some fi­nan­cial ease to par­ents, it does not ad­dress the press­ing and sys­temic is­sues plagu­ing the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor.

“TTUTA is not im­pressed with the lat­est promise by the ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter, Stu­art Young. The re­moval of VAT on school uni­forms will present a small sav­ings to our par­ents but there are more press­ing is­sues with­in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem which the ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter will well be aware of.”

Lum Kin said com­pre­hen­sive in­vest­ments in the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor are nec­es­sary to en­sure the long-term bet­ter­ment of the ed­u­ca­tion­al land­scape. 

“We look for­ward to his pro­nounce­ments on salary ne­go­ti­a­tions 2020-2023, ad­dress­ing in­fra­struc­tur­al is­sues through­out many of our schools, vi­o­lence and in­dis­ci­pline amongst stu­dents and the wider com­mu­ni­ty, mean­ing­ful cur­ricu­lum re­form, es­pe­cial­ly look­ing at stan­dard­ized tests and eval­u­a­tion on the whole.”

Lum Kin added that he was look­ing for­ward to hear­ing the plans for the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor from the oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ties con­test­ing the Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Coun­cil of Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tions (NPTA), Wal­ter Stew­art, said the ex­emp­tion should ex­tend be­yond school uni­forms. 

“It would al­so in­clude school books, school sup­plies even some of the nec­es­sary food items that stu­dents have to be tak­ing to school on a dai­ly ba­sis all those should come un­der the am­bit of re­duced VAT.”

Stew­art al­so not­ed that em­pha­sis must al­so be placed on ear­ly child care.

“We be­lieve that a firm foun­da­tion needs to be es­tab­lished soon as the child en­ters the first year in terms of lit­er­a­cy and nu­mer­a­cy be­cause many times stu­dents go through the sys­tem and if a sol­id foun­da­tion is not laid they pay the price in sec­ondary school lat­er on.”

Pres­i­dent of the Sin­gle Fa­thers As­so­ci­a­tion, Rhon­dall Fee­les al­so sup­port­ed the pro­posed plan to re­move VAT on school uni­forms but in­sist­ed that the in­com­ing gov­ern­ment place em­pha­sis on oth­er is­sues af­fect­ing the stu­dent pop­u­la­tion.

“Our great­est wish is for the de­f­i­n­i­tion of ed­u­ca­tion to be changed and I don’t want to say just sys­tem­i­cal­ly changed on writ­ing what ed­u­ca­tion is, the view, the per­cep­tion of ed­u­ca­tion. We want to see ed­u­ca­tion in its true in­tent which is a pur­pose of in­tent trans­lat­ed in the school sys­tem. We want to see a fo­cus on vo­ca­tion­al skills as well. We want to fo­cus on stu­dents who may not be aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly ex­cel­lent but may have gifts and tal­ents that should be show­cased and pri­ori­tised as well.”