Mrs Manning gets ‘good vibes’ from Couva school

Manning said so on Friday morning while she and a high profile technocrat team of the ministry’s officials, were paying a visit to the Couva school, as part of a tour to evaluate the Reform Programme taking place in schools, throughout the country. She noted that “you begin to feel the vibes as you enter a good school.”

On entry she was escorted by members of the school’s Cadet Force “and this impressed me a great deal.”

She then told the entire school population that they should get more involved in the Cadet Force as it was an excellent training ground to absorb values that would guide one into a straight path in life.

Manning stated that “Couva Government Secondary had been performing well throughout the years, despite many constraints, in that they had gained many scholarships, and in the process doing more brilliantly than several prestige schools in the country, and in that regard I wish to congratulate the principal, staff and students for their outstanding achievement.”

“In some schools you get a restless feeling but here you know what education is all about. Here you get a sense of peace, respect and quality,” she said.

The Education Minister praised the school for turning out “students who are well developed spiritually, emotionally, physically, socially, academically, to the point that you can go out into the community and help in the development of Trinidad and Tobago, as well as also going abroad and represent this country and stand side by side with any student anywhere in the world and do just as well or better. I am proud of you here at Couva Government Secondary School.”

She recognised that “you here have problems just as anyone of the 700 schools in the country (488 primary and the rest secondary).”

She said it was a “serious job to upgrade and bring to a level all these schools so as to deliver quality education to the young people of the country, over 300,000 of them.” “We have put in place a plan to ensure that the education system of Trinidad and Tobago is improved considerably,” she added. She said that the Ministry’s goal by 2015 is to ensure that 80 percent of the student population “would leave school fully certified and become useful citizens of the country.”

She stressed, “You must help to make Trinidad and Tobago a good place in which to live — peaceful, just as you are, contented, happy and fun-loving.”

At the Early Childhood Level, the Government needed to build 600 schools by 2015 “and if this is done some of the problems we are now experiencing would not be present at all.”

At the primary level the Ministry had put in place a National Test in Standards one and three to evaluate what was happening in the system.

She noted that in 2005 the National Test had shown that there was still a lot of work to be done and of the eight Educational Divisions only Caroni, St George East and Victoria had performed well.

She explained that some students did better in Maths than in English and girls outperformed boys academically.

They had also discovered that urban schools were doing much better than rural schools “and as such we have work to do in the rural areas.” Pastor Winston Cuffie, president of the PTA and Dave Persad, president of the Alumni Association, called for improved facilities for the school to keep pace with the delivery of quality education to the people of the country.