Longdenville school-fire response regrettable

THE fire that gutted Palmiste Primary School happened at a difficult time, a week into December, when it's admittedly difficult to spin up the operations necessary to relocate hundreds of students in preparation for a new school term. And unfortunately, the task wasn't handled nearly as well as it should have been.

As early as December 13, a week after the fire at the Longdenville school, TTUTA president Martin Lum Kin called for an extraordinary response to the situation from the Education Ministry, foreshadowing the issues that would face 176 students, their teachers and the school's management.

In the end, students and staff were housed at Longdenville Government Primary School and the new Edinburgh 500 Community Centre, opened on December 28.

Mr Lum Kin fretted after the beginning of the school term that there was inadequate stakeholder consultation on the relocation. He found little to be happy about in ministry's solution, which splits the school in two, stretching already thin resources to their limit. He specifically called out the Education Ministry for failing to consult with TTUTA on decision to split the school body, which he described as an alteration of the terms and conditions of the employment of the teachers. Responding to the Education Minister’s claim that remedial works continue throughout the year, he offered a list of South schools that are in need of attention that they aren’t getting, including St Therese RC Primary School, L’Anse Noire Moravian Primary and St Dominic’s Penal Primary.

St Therese Primary is sharing its compound with Poole RC Primary; L'Anse Noire Moravian was described as being in a deteriorating condition while St Dominic's has been decanted from its formal location for more than seven years.

In November 2023, Princes Town West Secondary School had to be shut down for sanitising after students and staff developed rashes attributed to contact dermatitis amid other infrastructural complaints there.

Hundreds of millions have been spent by the Education Ministry on school repairs. In fiscal 2022-2023, the ministry spent $322 million on 737 projects that encompassed 438 primary schools, 236 secondary schools and 50 early childhood care and education centres. Of these, 180 proved too extensive to be completed over the July-August vacation.

While every problem facing the school system can't be fixed right away, the ministry clearly needs to do a better job of communicating with its stakeholders, establishing a sensible and mutually acceptable schedule for school repairs. It must target the fundamentals of infrastructure, sewer systems, repairing furniture and the elimination of infection vectors before final works like painting to ensure that its efforts address the most important element in the school system, the children it is meant to serve.