TTUTA rates school reopening 6 to 7 out of 10

KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

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The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion may have re­opened all 777 Gov­ern­ment and Gov­ern­ment-as­sist­ed schools on Mon­day, but Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent Crys­tal Ashe has rat­ed the start of the new aca­d­e­m­ic year be­tween six and sev­en out of ten.

His as­sess­ment came as TTUTA con­tin­ued to re­ceive re­ports of prob­lems at schools fol­low­ing Mon­day’s re­open­ing, with three schools specif­i­cal­ly af­fect­ed by is­sues.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Ashe said Gloster Lodge Mora­vian Pri­ma­ry School, which was deal­ing with on­go­ing in­fra­struc­ture prob­lems, was in­op­er­a­ble on Mon­day but re­sumed class­es yes­ter­day.

St Hil­da’s Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School re­mained closed yes­ter­day af­ter teach­ers re­fused to work be­cause of a bat sit­u­a­tion at the school.

San Fer­nan­do Sev­enth-day Ad­ven­tist Pri­ma­ry School was al­so af­fect­ed, al­though clean­ing was car­ried out and class­es re­sumed.

Ashe said teach­ers at the San Fer­nan­do school were seek­ing writ­ten con­fir­ma­tion that the build­ing was safe af­ter an in­spec­tor re­port­ed­ly vis­it­ed and gave clear­ance.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing that con­sid­er­able work had been car­ried out be­fore the re­open­ing, Ashe crit­i­cised the tim­ing of some re­pairs.

He said TTUTA vis­it­ed a school in Port-of-Spain on Mon­day where MTS per­son­nel were on­ly then as­sess­ing a prob­lem and prepar­ing a scope of works.

Ac­cord­ing to Ashe, the prin­ci­pal had re­port­ed the is­sue be­fore the Ju­ly/Au­gust va­ca­tion and had raised it again short­ly be­fore the school closed.

He ques­tioned why the work could not have start­ed at the be­gin­ning of the va­ca­tion if the Min­istry al­ready knew about the prob­lem.

“The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion un­doubt­ed­ly dropped the ball this time around. Yes, quite a lot of work was done, but the work was done with­in the last week of school in many cas­es. And in some cas­es, even af­ter yes­ter­day, when we would have vis­it­ed one of the schools in Port-of-Spain, you had the per­sons from the MTS de­part­ment now vis­it­ing the school.”

Sim­i­lar­ly, the Na­tion­al Coun­cil of Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tions (NPTA) ex­pressed its con­cerns over the pace of this year’s re­pair pro­gramme.

NPTA pres­i­dent Wal­ter Stew­art said the as­so­ci­a­tion had been told that 359 schools were ear­marked for re­pairs, but by last Fri­day on­ly about 100 had been com­plet­ed or were near­ing com­ple­tion.

Stew­art con­trast­ed this with last year’s pro­gramme, which he said the NPTA had praised af­ter more than 270 schools were re­paired dur­ing the va­ca­tion pe­ri­od and al­most 99 per cent of schools were ready for the Sep­tem­ber 2025 re­open­ing.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme yes­ter­day, Stew­art said the NPTA re­mained con­cerned about the num­ber of schools where work was still out­stand­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly as re­ports of on­go­ing work con­tin­ued to reach the as­so­ci­a­tion af­ter the re­open­ing. How­ev­er, he said the NPTA wel­comed as­sur­ances from the Min­istry and MTS that out­stand­ing work would con­tin­ue af­ter school hours and on week­ends to min­imise dis­rup­tion.