Parents to pay for school furniture

THE EDITOR: Past and present governments boast of their vast achievements towards free and better educational opportunities for all sectors in Trinidad and Tobago.

My recent encounter at a reputable co-educational secondary school in Central has left me bewildered and evoked many unanswered questions in my mind.  Parents were requested to accompany their children, selected for Lower Form Six classes on their first day at school.  We were hustled into a room; a laboratory where parents perched on high stools and children stood around the room to await the rhetoric that required our presence. The hour-long address by the Acting Principal was apparently most stressful for him, for never once did the flicker of a smile cross his face.  Amongst other things, he belaboured the lack of funding for furniture for Form Six classes in his impassioned plea for a deposit if $200 by each student to the PTA account at a commercial bank. This request was initially made in a letter by the PTA but ironically, the absent president lost the golden opportunity to verbally validate the petition.

Parents were not fooled; we know the location selected for this meeting was a deliberate ploy to highlight the sorry condition of this classroom, in an attempt to eke out the stipulated sum.  We were advised that defaulters would be contacted by cell phone.  The parents’ nightmare is that children will be victimised because of the inability to fulfill this monetary demand. This is a call to the Minister of Education Mrs Hazel Manning to give us some answers.  Why must the head of this Central school stoop to such tactics for school funding?  Where does the Ministry of Education fit in this picture?  We appreciate the subsidy for books, but chairs and desks are vital to fully utilise this funding. Madam Minister, in the competitive field of education, permit teachers the freedom and opportunity to put into practice what they are trained, qualified and employed to do .... TEACH!

CYNTHIA RAGOONAN
Port-of-Spain