No room for V'zuelan children

Thousands of Venezuelans have flocked to TT seeking a better life not just for them, but also for their young children. And while adults are being given a chance to work here legally for one year, a chance for their children to receive an education seems in limbo.

The Prime Minister, on Thursday, said Government could not prevent Catholic schools from educating the children of Venezuelan migrants while the Catholic Church carried out its pastoral work.

But Dr Keith Rowley may have meant the church and not the schools as foreign children cannot be enrolled in local schools without proper documents.

While it may be all well and good for classes to be taught by non-governmental organisations as is the case by the La Romaine Migrant Support group which set up classes for the children at St Benedict's RC Church parish hall, with the blessings of Msgr Christian Pereira, it is not enough.

It may have been to this event the PM was speaking.

There are hundreds of migrant children and their parents have already been pleading for them to get an education, but there are rules to be followed.

According to the Education Act, for a non-national child to be registered in a school in TT, they must have all the relevant documentation from the Immigration Division.

Second vice-president of the TT Unified Teachers' Association Kyrla Robertson-Thomas said all foreigners had to go through immigration because there was a particular document that they must get.

She could not say exactly what the documents entailed, but Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi said these would be protocols established by the Immigration Division with foreign states.

"Every principal knows they must have that from immigration if they want to register their child. There are regulations that speak to the intake of children, you must take in a national in front of a non-national.

"There are cases of locals who are having trouble getting into particular schools. The regulations say other than the child living in the catchment area, they must be turning five by the end of the first term. Only if the school has a space that a non-national has applied for can the principal, with the documents from immigration, consider taking in the child. Not even the denominational schools can say they will take the children, they must have that document from Immigration and there must be no national fighting for that space."

Robertson-Thomas also said schools could only take in a certain amount of students per class. In first year, there should be one teacher for 20 students; second year teacher should have 25 students; upper standards should have one teacher for 30 students.

She said this was the time of year where parents were registering their children for the new term of the July-August vacation, and sometimes they had to wait because most of the schools were over-subscribed.

This seemed to be the main problem denominational schools had with enrolling Venezuelan children: space.

Pereira said the PM's announcement was made without consulting the Catholic board and did not know what it will entail.

"People have already been asking to get their children into Catholic schools, but there is a procedure. That has to be worked out by the authorities, between the Education Ministry and the Catholic board and then we would see how we can implement it.

"The (Catholic) schools are swamped and they will have to be bilingual and not all schools will have teachers who can handle the Spanish mentality, and by this I mean they will be talking in English, the children have a Spanish background will understand differently. A lot of people have been wondering what these children will do and that is why we are trying to provide basic literacy, numeracy and socialisation skills to the children who are in our environment."

Pereira said there were Trinidadians who wanted school places for their children, which would also cause other problems.

"As a priest people come to me and say Father, I'm trying to get my child into a Catholic school and I can't. So we will have to be very careful about taking in children because there are many children who want to come to Catholic schools who cannot get in because of space. It is not because of lack of wanting to help, but because we can't."

Head of the Anjuman Sunnat ul Jamaat Association Imam Yacoob Ali said there were few Muslim schools in the country, and they sometimes had to turn away students because of lack of space.

"We wouldn't be able to place them in the schools at all because we are always over-subscribed, we always have more people than we can accommodate, so that will only create problems here. I will have to talk with the principals to find out whether they can do that. If we don't have a bench or a seat to put them, where are we putting them?"

"If we are able to try and help, why not? But I can't tell you we will try now at this stage. And the experience is when we take people in that manner you will create problems. Those children will know a different standard and would not have grown up from the first year of school where they will know the mannerisms and discipline of our schools."

General secretary of the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha Satnarine Maharaj said the PM spoke out of turn by making the announcement.

"Dr Rowley said he cannot instruct denominational schools to take the children, but he could persuade them, appeal to them to take the children. Once the school has vacancies you take them."

But even Hindu schools struggled for space.

"People are complaining they cannot get into a Hindu school, but we are overloaded. You know how many people have gone to lawyers to try to get into a Maha Sabha school, but we just don't have the room. It is also at the discretion of the principal. That's all right with me."