Charles: Overcrowded schools result of flouted policy

Teachers and parents of the Signal Hill Government Primary School last Tuesday raise the issue of overcrowding at the school, noting that the school now caters to 380 students from a planned 150.

At the Tobago House of Assembly (THA) One-on-One community meeting held at the Lambeau Multi-purpose Facility, teacher Steve Peterkin identified overcrowding as a challenge with the substantial increase in student intake.

“Every year, more than 100 students register to come to this school. We have space for 50 children, sometimes less and we have to turn back upwards of 50 children away from the school,” Peterkin said.

He noted that schools’ officials are told that they have a catchment area - a designated zone within which students for a particular school should be drawn, but that this was problematic for both parents and school officials.

“That is one of the determining factors of whether a child would be accepted or not. So, when we turn away more than 50 students from Signal Hill Government Primary, they go to Lambeau and Lambeau says to them, ‘we cannot take you because you are not within the catchment zone,’ they go to Patience Hill and Patience Hill says to them ‘we are filled,’ and this is the issue that we have to face.

“I have to talk to parents with tears in their eyes because they are asking me, ‘Sir Peterkin, where am I to go? what am I to do?’ and then I have to look them in the eyes and tell them I have no answers,” he said.

One parent told Newsday Tobago her child has no school to go come September.

“I registered my child close to a year ago. Earlier this (last) week, I received a letter indicating that the school has reached their capacity and as a result my child has not been accepted,” said the parent.

“I am at wits end, I don’t know what to do and where to turn, where should I send my child. I live within walking distance of the school which puts me into the direct catchment area of the school, so I really don’t know what next,” she added.

In response to the concerns, Chief Secretary Kelvin Charles said the issue of overcrowding at schools like Signal Hill was because the policy of placing pupils was flouted by school officials in the past.

“There is a policy that says that those who reside in the catchment area must be given first preference. What we would have had in the past is a situation where principals have been flouting the policy and have created that challenge,” he said.

“Some of the schools are depopulated for whatever reason while some of the schools are overpopulated…when a school performs everybody wants their children to go to that school, and it has its disadvantages because those schools that are depopulated, there are teachers appointed to those schools and you cannot move them like that, it is the Teaching Service Commission that is responsible for transfers,” he said.

He asked parents to submit letters of concerns to the Administrator of the Division of Education, and promised to look into the matter.