I support the decisions of the parents of the Nelson Street Girls’ RC Primary School children who agreed with the school administration not to take this year’s SEA examination. You, too, should concur based on the dramatic decline in the national results from 2020 to 2022 (a whopping 26% decline …
Read More »Vaneisa: Taking liberties; the issue with Winford James’ ‘loose hypothesis’ on Indian/Hindi names
Having admitted that he hardly knows anything about ‘sub-continental Indian/Hindi naming conventions’, Winford James proceeded to write a column in last Sunday’s Guardian that revealed that he did not even bother to inform himself before presenting readers with an interpretation that was breathtakingly appalling. Declaring that he is ‘a big, …
Read More »Baldeosingh: Education system deprives and abuses black children
“[…] The pattern here is undeniable: the schools with the highest Excelling to Academic Watch ratio are located in Caroni and Victoria, while the obverse ratio is found in the Port-of-Spain and South Eastern areas. The other six areas have more or less equal ratios of good to bad schools. …
Read More »Noble: Who really cares? How shallow protests ignore chance for real change
‘Poor children are victims of circumstance/ In life they never really get a chance/Or have opportunities as privileged children do/ The road from the poor suburb to prison leads them/ From broken homes they are condemned to fail/ Their abusive and drug-addicted parents serving time in jail/ Their parents too …
Read More »Noble: Faith and Science are two sides of same coin, both can help combat Covid-19
The great uncertainty of the impact of the Covid-19 disease wreaks fear and doubt in many. In a world that longs for certainty, we have met our match. For much of our human history, we have thought of the future as ‘a terrifyingly unknowable blur’. More lately, full of increasing …
Read More »Raffique Shah: ‘Black power’ and Indians; when flowering racial unity sparked a revolution
The following column was written by Raffique Shah on 9 June 2000: IN 1970, I was the only Indian officer in the Trinidad and Tobago Regiment. I was also the youngest officer, having graduated from Sandhurst in July 1966, some four months after I had turned 20. When I returned …
Read More »Noble: Education for the privileged; how the dice is loaded against poor students
In the 2012 budget, the government adopted a lofty goal: ‘Education for all’. It was built on the Draft Quality Standards for Education (2005) and inter alia sought to ensure all students achieved recognised and measurable learning outcomes so that they could contribute to the country’s economic sustainability and be …
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