TTUTA flags issues at 11 schools despite ministry’s all-clear

Al­though the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion re­port­ed that all 777 gov­ern­ment and gov­ern­ment-as­sist­ed schools opened for the new aca­d­e­m­ic year yes­ter­day, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) is call­ing for ur­gent at­ten­tion to 11 schools af­fect­ed by is­sues rang­ing from in­ad­e­quate fur­ni­ture to main­te­nance and pest con­trol con­cerns.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, the min­istry said all schools, in­clud­ing Ear­ly Child­hood Care and Ed­u­ca­tion (EC­CE) cen­tres, were open for the start of the school term.

The min­istry al­so said out­stand­ing re­pairs at a small num­ber of schools would be com­plet­ed af­ter school hours and on week­ends.

“Re­quired health and safe­ty stan­dards will be main­tained to pro­tect stu­dents and staff,” the min­istry stat­ed.

How­ev­er, TTUTA re­port­ed that vis­its con­duct­ed by its of­fi­cials yes­ter­day iden­ti­fied sev­er­al on­go­ing chal­lenges at schools across the coun­try, de­spite work hav­ing been car­ried out at sev­er­al fa­cil­i­ties.

The as­so­ci­a­tion list­ed the fol­low­ing con­cerns:

• Ari­ma Girls’ Gov­ern­ment School —lack of fur­ni­ture.

• Ari­ma North Sec­ondary School—on­go­ing in­fra­struc­ture works.

• Mal­abar Com­pos­ite Sec­ondary School—lack of fur­ni­ture.

• San Rafael RC Pri­ma­ry School —de­fec­tive wa­ter pump and bat in­fes­ta­tion.

• Tamana RC Pri­ma­ry School— bat in­fes­ta­tion. TTUTA said re­me­di­al work was ini­tial­ly de­clined but was lat­er car­ried out and the school sani­tised.

• Brazil RC Pri­ma­ry School—lack of fur­ni­ture and con­cerns in­volv­ing vi­o­lent par­ents.

TTUTA al­so re­port­ed a se­vere short­age of teach­ers’ fur­ni­ture at the South East Port-of-Spain Gov­ern­ment School, claim­ing re­quests had been sub­mit­ted since Sep­tem­ber 2025 and again in Ju­ly this year.

At St Hil­da’s Gov­ern­ment School, the union said main­te­nance work was need­ed be­cause bats were in­hab­it­ing the build­ing’s ceil­ing.

Con­cerns were al­so raised at Gloster Lodge Mora­vian School in Bel­mont fol­low­ing an elec­tri­cal fire.

Mean­while, Cunu­pia Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School re­quires floor­ing re­pairs in its of­fice, TTUTA said, re­sult­ing in the tem­po­rary re­lo­ca­tion of the prin­ci­pal and vice-prin­ci­pal. The union al­so re­port­ed un­spec­i­fied haz­ards at Fyz­abad An­gli­can Sec­ondary School.

“TTUTA is not seek­ing to be an­tag­o­nis­tic. Our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is to high­light con­cerns af­fect­ing the safe­ty and well-be­ing of ed­u­ca­tors and stu­dents and to en­sure that these mat­ters re­ceive ap­pro­pri­ate at­ten­tion,” the union said.

It added that the is­sues high­light­ed un­der­scored the need for stronger com­mu­ni­ca­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween TTUTA and the min­istry.

“We re­main con­cerned that many of the va­ca­tion re­pair projects com­menced too late. Much of the in­for­ma­tion re­quired to iden­ti­fy and pri­ori­tise these works should al­ready have been avail­able through the Min­istry’s Schools In­fra­struc­ture and Man­age­ment Sys­tem (SIMS),” the union stat­ed.

TTUTA called on the min­istry to make greater use of da­ta col­lect­ed through the SIMS plat­form to fa­cil­i­tate time­ly, in­formed de­ci­sions and en­sure re­pairs are com­plet­ed be­fore the start of each school term.