Chester Sam­bra­no

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) has claimed vic­to­ry fol­low­ing its day of “rest and re­flec­tion” yes­ter­day.

Ed­u­ca­tors were asked to stay away from class­es on what was the start of the new aca­d­e­m­ic year yes­ter­day and af­ter the day end­ed, TTUTA pres­i­dent An­to­nia Tekah-De­fre­itas told Guardian Me­dia the call was re­sound­ing­ly heed­ed.

“Gen­er­al­ly, when we tal­ly what we have thus far in terms of ad­min­is­tra­tors, teach­ers in the class­room, su­per­vi­sors et cetera, we had about 85 per cent re­sponse to our call,” she said.

She added, “It was a suc­cess, we would say it was a suc­cess be­cause we sent a clear mes­sage that un­for­tu­nate­ly, we had to dis­rupt the sys­tem, which we re­al­ly didn’t want to do.”

She said the as­so­ci­a­tion is now wait­ing on a re­sponse from Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) Dr Daryl Din­di­al.

“We look for­ward now to that cre­ative think­ing com­ing out from the CPO’s of­fice in terms of what he would of­fer the ed­u­ca­tion pro­fes­sion­als by way of com­pen­sa­tion dur­ing the salary ne­go­ti­a­tion process,” she ex­plained.

How­ev­er, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion gave slight­ly dif­fer­ent fig­ures to TTUTA, al­though they too showed high num­bers of ab­sen­teeism by teach­ers.

“Based on da­ta re­ceived from the Di­vi­sion of School Su­per­vi­sion, at our pri­ma­ry schools to­day, there was at­ten­dance of 16,819, or 17% stu­dents, and 1,392 or 27% teach­ers. At de­nom­i­na­tion­al pri­ma­ry schools, the teacher and stu­dent at­ten­dance was 28% and 20% re­spec­tive­ly, while the cor­re­spond­ing at­ten­dance at gov­ern­ment schools was 24% and 12% re­spec­tive­ly,” the min­istry said in a re­lease.

The min­istry added that at sec­ondary schools, at­ten­dance was 28,738, or 39% of stu­dents and 1,851, or 31% teach­ers.

It ex­plained that at de­nom­i­na­tion­al sec­ondary schools, the teacher and stu­dent at­ten­dance was 47% and 68% re­spec­tive­ly, while the cor­re­spond­ing at­ten­dance at gov­ern­ment schools was 25% and 26% re­spec­tive­ly.

As it re­lat­ed to par­ents and af­fect­ed stu­dents, Tekah-De­Fre­itas said enough no­tice was giv­en of the im­pend­ing ac­tion for them to make al­ter­nate arrange­ments.

But out­side the Rich­mond Street Boys’ An­gli­can School and the Sa­cred Heart Boys’ Ro­man Catholic School yes­ter­day, some vis­i­bly frus­trat­ed par­ents ex­pressed lit­tle em­pa­thy for the teach­ers.

“I know they want their mon­ey, I know they worked for their mon­ey but it is at the chil­dren’s ex­pense,” one moth­er said.

An­oth­er moth­er ex­pressed anger that “a whole day wast­ed af­ter the Au­gust va­ca­tion, that is the bad thing about it.”

The sen­ti­ments were echoed by one fa­ther who spoke with Guardian Me­dia.

“I find that is kind of bad be­cause it is two months and school is now open back and they done strik­ing al­ready, I don’t find that mak­ing sense,” he said.

But it wasn’t all bad news, ac­cord­ing to one male par­ent, as some teach­ers did come out to en­sure stu­dents set­tled in on the first day.

“His teacher is there and I com­mend her for that, I mean I un­der­stand what she is go­ing through, work­ing on a 2013 salary,” he said.

There were al­so those par­ents who shared the con­cern of the teach­ers, like one moth­er who left her son at school not know­ing what was go­ing to take place for the rest of the day.

“I think they worked re­al­ly hard for the last two years, so if it is that they are de­cid­ing to protest to­day then that is their right,” she said.

Sa­cred Heart Boys’ RC School pupil Isi­ah King told Guardian Me­dia that all he did yes­ter­day was “play and have fun and watch over an­oth­er class.”

The ac­tion arose af­ter TTUTA called the boy­cott in re­sponse to the Gov­ern­ment’s salary in­crease of­fer of 4 per cent for the pe­ri­od 2014 to 2019.

Prime Min­ster Dr Kei­th Row­ley has said that in­creas­ing the salaries of pub­lic sec­tor work­ers by four per cent would cost the state $2.5 bil­lion in back­pay and an ad­di­tion­al $500 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly.

Mean­while, com­ment­ing on TTUTA’s ac­tion in To­ba­go, Sec­re­tary of Ed­u­ca­tion, Re­search and Tech­nol­o­gy Zor­isha Hack­ett said, “TTUTA made a call for its teach­ers to en­gage in this type of ac­tion and the teach­ers re­spond­ed to that ac­tion, which is their de­mo­c­ra­t­ic right. They have to do what they have to do and to ex­press their dis­plea­sure in what is be­ing of­fered to them, so I re­spect that they would have ac­ced­ed to their de­mo­c­ra­t­ic right.

“As Sec­re­tary, we at the Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion, Re­search and Tech­nol­o­gy would have to do what we have to do to make prepa­ra­tions when­ev­er this type of protest ac­tion oc­curs, but as it re­lates to the teach­ers stay­ing away, they took ac­tion based on their de­mo­c­ra­t­ic right as mem­bers of the union.”