While face-to-face class­es may be the best prepa­ra­tion for stu­dents set to write na­tion­al and re­gion­al ex­am­i­na­tions in 2021, there are still some con­cerns about chil­dren ad­her­ing to the COVID-19 guide­lines.
That is at least for pri­ma­ry school stu­dents. Na­tion­al Pri­ma­ry Schools Prin­ci­pals' As­so­ci­a­tion (NPSPA) pres­i­dent Lance Mot­t­ley told Sun­day Guardian that the Gov­ern­ment's de­ci­sion to re­open schools to Stan­dard Five pupils in Feb­ru­ary was one of sev­er­al pro­pos­als his mem­bers made to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion. Dur­ing Sat­ur­day's Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter's me­dia con­fer­ence, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced that schools would re­open vir­tu­al­ly for the school pop­u­la­tion on Jan­u­ary 4. Once the COVID-19 num­bers are ac­cept­able in the fol­low­ing month, the Gov­ern­ment may al­low stu­dents sit­ting the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) back in schools. It would be the same for sec­ondary schools stu­dents prepar­ing for the Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate and Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am­i­na­tion.
Mot­t­ley said phys­i­cal class­es was the best prepa­ra­tion for the younger stu­dents. How­ev­er, the NPSPA un­der­stands there is a risk in bring­ing them back out.
"Our main chal­lenge is phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing among the stu­dents, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing the break time and lunchtime, so I think there are oth­er lo­gis­tics to work out. We al­so made oth­er kinds of pro­pos­als in cas­es where there might be in large school pop­u­la­tion for stu­dents to at­tend on a ro­ta­tion­al ba­sis so that we can bet­ter con­trol the num­bers dur­ing break time and lunchtime. The on­ly way we can know is to try and see if it can work. It will be dif­fer­ent this time as there are ad­di­tion­al arrange­ments," Mot­t­ley said.
On March 13, Row­ley or­dered the clo­sure of all places of learn­ing for one week, a day af­ter the Min­istry of Health con­firmed T&T's first COVID-19 case. As the case­load in­creased, schools re­mained closed. On Ju­ly 20, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion al­lowed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 19,000 SEA stu­dents back in­to schools. With­in days, in­fect­ed stu­dents be­gan show­ing up in the school sys­tem.
Back then, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram said it was dif­fi­cult for young chil­dren to so­cial dis­tance and Mot­t­ley ad­mit­ted it was a chal­lenged for school staff to keep chil­dren apart. It led to the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion to call on the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to hire school mon­i­tors. TTUTA pres­i­dent An­to­nia De Fre­itas was un­avail­able for a com­ment Sat­ur­day. 
As stake­hold­ers pre­pare for the pos­si­ble phys­i­cal re­open­ing of schools, Mot­t­ley said the COVID-19 sit­u­a­tion re­mains flu­id, mak­ing it hard to make medi­um or long-term plans. He said prin­ci­pals would con­tin­u­ous­ly as­sess the school set­ting and if nec­es­sary, re­quest ad­di­tion­al re­sources from the min­istry.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to As­so­ci­a­tion of Prin­ci­pals of Pub­lic Sec­ondary Schools pres­i­dent Sher­ra Car­ring­ton-James, but there was no re­sponse.