Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Stu­dent safe­ty is be­ing called in­to ques­tion by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) as teach­ers fall prey to COVID-19, leav­ing chil­dren with­out su­per­vi­sion.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on Thurs­day, TTUTA first vice pres­i­dent Mar­lon Seales said they are con­cerned about the su­per­vi­sion of stu­dents as teach­ers are faced with iso­la­tion or quar­an­tine.

Com­pound­ing the is­sue, he said, is the strip­ping of prin­ci­pals’ pow­er to dis­miss school ear­ly or close the in­sti­tu­tion if staff lev­els are too low to fa­cil­i­tate ad­e­quate stu­dent su­per­vi­sion.

“We are con­cerned that pow­er is tak­en away from the prin­ci­pal, who by right of the Ed­u­ca­tion Act, is the per­son who is re­spon­si­ble for the safe­ty of the stu­dents,” Seales said. 

Un­der the guide­lines for the re­turn to phys­i­cal class­es, the de­ci­sion now lies with the Chief Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer, who will make the de­ter­mi­na­tion af­ter con­sul­ta­tions with of­fi­cials at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and the Coun­ty Med­ical Of­fi­cer of Health. 

Seales said this pol­i­cy has al­ready cre­at­ed prob­lems for some schools. 

“While I wouldn’t be able to name the school, there are sev­er­al in­stances where we have mul­ti­ple teach­ers be­ing on quar­an­tine but the school prin­ci­pal is un­able to close the school, (or) dis­miss the school based on that crit­i­cal min­i­mum lev­el of staffing,” he said. 

“So then the man­ag­er, the prin­ci­pal, is placed in a sit­u­a­tion where they are re­spon­si­ble for the health and safe­ty of the stu­dents but not giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to make de­ci­sions that will al­low and en­sure the safe­ty of the stu­dents.”

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly for com­ment on TTUTA’s claims and for sta­tis­tics on teach­ers out of the sys­tem due to quar­an­tine or iso­la­tion. How­ev­er, no re­sponse was re­ceived up to late Thurs­day. 

Chair­man of the Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry School Board, Vick­ram Ram­lal, told Guardian Me­dia that 110 teach­ers and prin­ci­pals out of the 979 staffing their 72 schools were in iso­la­tion or quar­an­tine as of last Fri­day.

So far, he said they have re­ceived five sub­sti­tute teach­ers from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion. De­spite the num­ber of staff out of the sys­tem, he said prin­ci­pals have been able to su­per­vise the chil­dren be­cause of low at­ten­dance, as few as 30 per cent in some.

“Be­cause the at­ten­dance of the stu­dent pop­u­la­tion is very low, the prin­ci­pals have been able to man­age their staff or re­dis­trib­ute their staff to meet the needs of the stu­dents who are com­ing out,” he said. 

This in­cludes com­bin­ing some class­es to en­sure ad­e­quate dis­tri­b­u­tion of teach­ers to stu­dents. 

“So like if you have three Stan­dard Three (class­es) and the amount of stu­dents com­ing out mak­ing up two, then you’d have two Stan­dard Three for the time be­ing,” he said.

Act­ing Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS) Vi­jay Ma­haraj told Guardian Me­dia that 27 teach­ers and prin­ci­pals out of the 957 staffing their 43 schools were in iso­la­tion or quar­an­tine as of last Fri­day. He too said class­es weren’t dis­rupt­ed but cred­it­ed this to the 11 sub­sti­tute teach­ers pro­vid­ed by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said all schools have one On-the-Job-Trainee (OJT) that added to the su­per­vi­sion force.

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