Garcia: All schools reopening today

Education Minister Anthony Garcia assures that all schools will reopen today. Garcia made the comments in a phone interview with Newsday.

When asked if all schools will reopen today he said, “Yes. I have been in constant contact with our technical and professional officers at the Ministry of Education who have all assured me that everything is in place for all schools to be opened tomorrow.”

Garcia said they were visiting schools and there were a number of schools which had challenges last term. But, he said, the ministry “engaged the assistance” of the National Maintenance Training and Security Company Ltd (MTS) to “have provided project management and MTS itself had enlisted a number of contractors.”

“Again, the reports that I received would tell me that those contractors have done an excellent job making all our schools ready and available to our students tomorrow.”

He said the ministry’s main objective is to provide access to an education for TT’s children and one of the ways the ministry can do so is by having schools ready and available.

He said the ministry was building TT’s education system on four major policies of access, equity, quality education and governance and administration.

The ministry, he added, has embarked on a numbered of training programmes for “principals, vice-principals, heads of departments.”

Garcia said the ministry wanted to ensure that the schools leaders had the administrative ability apart from its pedagogical skills.

Discussions, he added, have been held with the University of the West Indies and the University of the Southern Caribbean which will see more of TT’s secondary school teachers without professional training being able to access the professional training which would lead to the diploma in education.

Garcia was unable to comment on TT Unified Teachers Association (TTUTA) saying, “it is up to the Ministry of Finance to direct the CPO and therefore any consideration, whether the economy or country can sustain any increases that has to be determined by the Ministry of Finance and the Chief Personnel Officer (CPO), not by the Ministry of Education.”

He said also when asked if contingencies were in place if teachers strike, “one of our major responsibilities is to ensure that our students have access to quality education and if it comes where contingency plans have to be put in place to ensure that our students receive that education, we certainly will put those contingency plans in place.”