Education Minister tells Mark: No, ministry will not publicise audit on schools

Education Minister Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly says the information within the ministry's audit on schools in this country is "sensitive" and should not be made public.

She was responding to questions by Opposition Senator Wade Mark in Senate on Tuesday morning.

Mark asked Gadsby-Dolly for further details of repairs done at the San Juan North Secondary School which were completed last December.

He then asked what approaches or policies will be undertaken to ensure proper maintenance and to prevent future infrastructural damage.

Gadsby-Dolly said the majority of schools in TT are over 40 years old, with many also being over 50 or even over 100.

She said that daily, different schools have emergency situations with respect to infrastructure that no one can predict.

"So while one may want to take a preventative approach in most cases, we have to spend quite a lot of time and money fixing things that are presenting in emergency circumstances.

"So at this time, that is the priority – to ensure that what ever problems are coming up at schools that will (cause) loss of teaching time, that we deal with those expeditiously. And we have quote a number of those, especially after the covid19 experience where we had schools that were not occupied for up to two years and, therefore, would not have been receiving the maintenance that would have been required if they were occupied at that time..."

Mark then asked if the ministry will conduct an audit of this country's schools to prevent emergency situations in the future.

Gadsby-Dolly said this has already been done and it "continues to be upgraded."

Mark asked if the document can be shared with the Senate, to which Gadsby-Dolly said no.

"That is information that keeps being upgraded constantly, and is also information that is very important for the continuous running of our schools, and we don't want that kind of sensitive information out in the public domain."