The state­ment sent out by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion yes­ter­day about the start of the 2024-2025 aca­d­e­m­ic year was pre­dictably up­beat, gloss­ing over the phys­i­cal state of many pub­lic schools.

Days ear­li­er, there was the of­fi­cial re­open­ing of two schools — Sis­ter's Road An­gli­can Pri­ma­ry School in New Grant and Holy Cross An­gli­can Pri­ma­ry School in Mara­bel­la — where re­pairs were com­plet­ed at costs of $6 mil­lion and $25 mil­lion re­spec­tive­ly.

This might paint a rosy pic­ture of the phys­i­cal state of schools. How­ev­er, it didn’t take long for the peren­ni­al prob­lems with the Ju­ly/Au­gust School Va­ca­tion Re­pair Pro­gramme to sur­face. Re­pairs that were ei­ther un­fin­ished or nev­er start­ed made for a shaky start to yes­ter­day's school year.

The Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry’s claim that this year’s re­pair pro­gramme, with work done at more than 60 schools, ad­dressed “sev­er­al crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture needs, en­abling the safe re­sump­tion of school ac­tiv­i­ties,” was not the re­al­i­ty for scores of stu­dents re­turn­ing to class­rooms yes­ter­day.

At Mt Hope Sec­ondary, there was a protest over poor phys­i­cal con­di­tions. PTA pres­i­dent Mer­rell Rod­ney said let­ters were sent to the min­istry re­quest­ing as­sis­tance to re­pair the school but noth­ing was done.

There were al­so prob­lems at Holy Name Con­vent, Pe­nal, where Forms Two and Three will have to ro­tate at­ten­dance for the next two weeks be­cause of on­go­ing roof re­pairs.

Al­though some $10 mil­lion was spent on re­pairs at St George's Col­lege, Barataria, in­com­plete work de­layed the re­turn to class­es for the ma­jor­i­ty of the school pop­u­la­tion.

In any giv­en year, re­pairs are need­ed in many of the na­tion’s schools and bil­lions are chan­nelled in­to the School Va­ca­tion Re­pair Pro­gramme for that pur­pose.

This year, some $20 mil­lion was spent on re­pairs dur­ing the Ju­ly/Au­gust va­ca­tion but that sum did not cov­er many of the schools where ur­gent re­pairs are need­ed.

Some stu­dents and teach­ers have re­turned to school build­ings that are not safe learn­ing en­vi­ron­ments and oth­ers are be­ing ac­com­mo­dat­ed at church halls and com­mu­ni­ty spaces that are not fit for pur­pose.

As a re­sult, there is a strong pos­si­bil­i­ty of dis­rup­tions and un­sched­uled shut­downs which wreak hav­oc on teach­ing time and neg­a­tive­ly af­fect ex­am prepa­ra­tion and oth­er aca­d­e­m­ic ac­tiv­i­ties.

A lot of these prob­lems could be avoid­ed with a sys­tem of reg­u­lar build­ing main­te­nance in the pub­lic school sys­tem. How­ev­er, that has nev­er been a pri­or­i­ty, so mi­nor is­sues are left to de­gen­er­ate in­to ma­jor, cost­ly prob­lems be­fore they get any at­ten­tion.

Giv­en the con­nec­tion be­tween the school en­vi­ron­ment and aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance, there should be much more fo­cus on en­sur­ing safe and con­ducive con­di­tions for learn­ing and teach­ing.

The truth is that the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry’s con­sis­tent fail­ures in this area are large­ly avoid­able.

The crit­i­cal el­e­ment miss­ing in the cur­rent sys­tem is a long-term school main­te­nance plan that in­cludes reg­u­lar in­spec­tions and pre­ven­tive main­te­nance, so that build­ings don’t get to the stage of di­lap­i­da­tion be­fore there is any at­tempt at an in­ter­ven­tion.

There al­so needs to be a plan to ad­dress old, de­te­ri­o­rat­ing school build­ings. There are some more than 100 years old that should be on pri­or­i­ty lists for re­place­ment or up­grades.

These un­der­tak­ings will not be sim­ple or cheap but con­sid­er­ing all that is at stake, they are well worth the ef­fort.