Carisa Lee

Since face-to-face class­es re­sumed for all Forms Four to Six stu­dents on Oc­to­ber 25, at least six schools have been re­port­ed to have had COVID-19 out­breaks.

Ad­dress­ing the is­sue yes­ter­day, Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent An­to­nia Tekah-De Fre­itas said the rea­son for this is be­cause there was no sys­tem­at­ic plan to deal with dis­pens­ing ed­u­ca­tion un­der the pan­dem­ic.

“There must be a com­ing to­geth­er of minds to plan for the re­open­ing,” Tekah-De Fre­itas said.

The re­port­ed schools with out­breaks in­clude Iere High School, Ma­son Hall Sec­ondary School, St Au­gus­tine Girls’ High, Bish­op Anstey High School East & Trin­i­ty Col­lege East and Sig­nal Hill Sec­ondary School.

Since Oc­to­ber 4, there have been 55 con­firmed cas­es of COVID with­in the sec­ondary school sys­tem.

Speak­ing at a Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ (UWI) vir­tu­al we­bi­nar ti­tled Man­ag­ing the Na­tion­al Ed­u­ca­tion Sys­tem, Tekah-De Fre­itas said the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion’s “if all goes well” at­ti­tude on the pos­si­ble re­open­ing of schools for Forms One to Three in Jan­u­ary does not build con­fi­dence in the sys­tem.

“We can­not say it’s busi­ness as usu­al,” she said dur­ing the dis­cus­sion, which was host­ed by the Sir Arthur Lewis In­sti­tute of So­cial and Eco­nom­ic Stud­ies (SALIS­ES).

The TTUTA pres­i­dent said schools be­ing closed as soon as there was an out­break showed that the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem in the last two years had not tran­si­tioned from emer­gency mit­i­ga­tion strate­gies to a more long-term so­lu­tion. She said this dis­rup­tion does not do well for stu­dents, es­pe­cial­ly those prepar­ing for Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­ams and CXC.

“We have to take stock of the lessons. The pan­dem­ic has shown how in­ad­e­quate our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem is to be re­silient, adapt­able and ag­ile,” she said.

Plan­ning Co­or­di­na­tor in the Plan­ning De­part­ment of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, Bob­by An­drews, added that there were lay­ers to the con­cept of herd im­mu­ni­ty. He said dis­rup­tion at schools will con­tin­ue if there isn’t herd im­mu­ni­ty at these in­sti­tu­tions and at homes.

“I am con­fi­dent the re­al is­sue is vac­ci­na­tion...In two weeks 11 schools were closed, noth­ing will be dif­fer­ent this time,” An­drews said.

The pan­el­lists in the ap­prox­i­mate­ly three-hour dis­cus­sion al­so touched on the emo­tion­al and men­tal trau­ma the pan­dem­ic has put on par­ents, teach­ers and stu­dents.

“A teacher cried her­self to sleep at night af­ter her au­dio failed,” UWI Ad­min­is­tra­tor/Ed­u­ca­tor Dr Sabeer­ah Ab­dul-Ma­jied said.

Home­school­ing and learn­ing loss, mean­while, were on­ly is­sues that can on­ly be as­sessed when the stu­dents re­turn to school for in-per­son as­sess­ments, As­so­ciate Pro­fes­sor of His­to­ry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the South­ern Caribbean, Dr Fiona Ra­jku­mar, said.

“Par­ents do­ing their chil­dren’s work. So you give an as­sess­ment. You are see­ing hand­writ­ing that is clear­ly not the chil­dren,” she ex­plained.

High lev­els of ab­sen­teeism was an­oth­er fac­tor of learn­ing loss, Ra­jku­mar not­ed.

SALIS­ES plans to have an­oth­er dis­cus­sion on De­cem­ber 3.