EARLY SOLUTION NEEDED

An early solution is needed with respect to the uncomfortable situation at the Tranquillity Government Primary School, which has been closed since late last month as the building has been deemed a health hazard. If scores of students are not to be denied the opportunity this year to secure places at secondary schools of their choice through the fast approaching SEA examination, some swift action is needed. Their parents have been keeping them away from school through understandable concern for their welfare, even as representatives of the Trinidad and Tobago Unified Teachers Association (TTUTA) have been meeting with the school’s teachers on the question of suitable alternative accommodation. Clearly, this situation in which the Tranquillity Government Primary School has had to be deemed a health hazard did not suddenly happen overnight, and must have been the result of years of unattended decay of a building originally constructed in the earlier part of the last century as a Drill Hall for soldiers.

The Primary School had once formed part of the former Tranquillity Intermediate School on Victoria Avenue, which accommodated both primary and secondary students until Government moved to provide additional secondary places in the wake of its free secondary education programme. The old Drill Hall was reconstructed to accommodate the Primary School, but almost from its conversion had been criticised as not suited to a school. Ironically, Tranquillity, which faces the dismal prospect of its children not being properly prepared for this year’s SEA examinations, in the 1940s regularly copped half of the Government Exhibitions awarded at the time. It slipped in achievement and status over the years and particularly after its primary section was delinked from the old Intermediate section now known as the Tranquillity Government Secondary School.

The Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Works must be jointly blamed for allowing the school to slide into this state. Is there not a system in place by which public buildings, including schools, are regularly checked by Ministry of Works engineers and supporting staff to ensure that physical standards are maintained? Are efforts not made by the Works Ministry, along with the Education Ministry in the case of schools and Ministry of Education offices, to take steps to promptly deal with any physical or other problems? Clearly, this process would be cheaper for the taxpayer, and early and immediate action taken would have meant that the children would not have had their education unduly interrupted. As it is, the wholly undesirable situation at the Tranquillity Government Primary School can result in the demotivation of both the pupils and their teachers.

The hard work put in by the teachers over the years to improve the children educationally, and to position them to access the best possible secondary education is in danger of being derailed. In the meantime, arrangements should be made with respect to the SEA pupils, along with any interim make-up classes, for them to be given counselling. But it should not end there. It should be made clear to the children and their parents as well that the interruption of classes do not mean an unscheduled holiday, and parents should be encouraged to assist, where feasible, with effective supervision of their children’s studies.