Education Minister Anthony Garcia yesterday celebrated the smooth reopening of all primary and secondary schools after the Easter break and he criticised the former administration for their mishandling and mismanagement of the education system and those employed within the Ministry of Education.
Referring to the reopening of all schools as an unprecedented feat which had been non-existent for the past 15 years, Garcia said they inherited a “dysfunctional” ministry in which all the employees were “disorganised, saddened and disgruntled.”
Garcia said the main reason was because the staff felt “disrespected by certain persons.”
Unwilling to identify anyone by name, Garcia said he along with Minister in the Ministry of Education Dr Lovell Francis set about to “heal” the rift and were happy to report that senior officials and other employees were now “much more comfortable.”
Claiming that schools had also been in a state of disrepair with some closing down and others not being reopened for various reasons which resulted in students missing classes, Garcia said parents, teachers and students were “very dissatisfied and peeved with so many things that were going wrong in the education system.”
Highlighting the scrapping of the Continuous Assessment Component (CAC) which had been introduced by the former People’s Partnership government, Garcia said it had placed an undue amount of stress and pressure on the shoulders of students, teachers and parents.
Following consultation with the T&T Unified Teachers Association and the National Parent Teacher Association, a note was taken to Cabinet to scrap the CAC, which Garcia said had brought a welcome relief to all involved.
He also claimed that they had met a system of violence and indiscipline in schools, which was “untenable.”
Crediting Francis and other stakeholders for the ministry’s efforts to halt the scourge of violence and indiscipline, Garcia presented an update on the students who were removed from the Chaguanas North Secondary School and the El Dorado East Secondary School, after they exhibited unacceptable behaviours.
Claiming that the ministry’s intervention had sent a clear message to other students, Garcia said they had witnessed a “great decrease” in reports of violence and indiscipline within the past couple of weeks.
The minister said yesterday’s power outage in Port-of-Spain did not hamper school operations although there were reports that classes at the St Francois Girls’ Secondary School had been dismissed early as a result.
Asked about reports that two students had held up a taxi driver with a toy gun in San Fernando on the weekend, Garcia said no such information had been brought to them and that it would have occurred during the school vacation.
Pressed to respond to statements by the former education minister Dr Tim Gopeesingh that he was being unfair when he claimed bias in the award of national scholarships in the previous five years, Garcia held firm to his statements as he explained that the subject offerings and categories were designed to provide an unfair advantage to certain students.
Garcia explained that his comments were based on careful analysis and followed discussions with senior ministry officials who had been privy to the criteria used to select scholarship recipients.