OF the 16,523 registered Venezuelans, at least 4,400 are children who are supposed to be in school.
The students instead are in a parallel education system awaiting approval from the National Security Ministry to allow them access to public schools. In the interim, 1,400 migrant students have enrolled in Equal Place, a parallel education system developed in 2019.
Equal Place uses online platforms NotesMaster and Daware to teach the children, preparing them to enter the school system. It is promoted through the Education Working Group (EWG), inclusive of UNICEF, UNHCR, Living Water Community (LWC), TTV Solidarity Network, Catholic Education Board of Management (CEBM), Archdiocesan Ministry for Migrants and Refugees (Office of the Archbishop), Pan-American Development Foundation (PADF) and the Ministry of Education.
For the past two years none of the migrant children have been able to access formal education in both private and public schools.
Chairman of the Association of Denominational Boards of Education Sharon Mangroo said in 2019, the government approached the organisation to help prepare migrant students to enter the school system.
“About two years, almost three years ago, the Prime Minister asked the Archbishop to take responsibility for educating migrant children. The Archbishop met with the then minister of education, and then minister of national security and they worked out a procedure for doing that. The bottom line is that the Ministry of National Security must give approval.”
When contacted for an update, National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds said: “This matter is not in front of me as Minister of National Security in any official way.”
[caption id="attachment_916664" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Venezuelan children after landing with adult migrants in Los Iros. - PHOTO BY LINCOLN HOLDER[/caption]
Mangroo said the Catholic School Board has prepared at least 100 Venezuelan children for entry into primary school and are awaiting approval.
“The provision is that no local child must be negatively affected. No local child must be denied a place from the school. So what we do is that we identified primary schools, because we're not touching secondary school, that’s too controversial, in which there are school spaces.
"So we identified those and then we did the rest of the things that are necessary. We made sure that they were children whose parents held registration cards and they had sufficient English so that they would not disrupt the school.”
She added that teachers were also trained to teach English as a second language so that both students and teachers will be prepared.
Mangroo said it was even more difficult to have migrants enter secondary schools because of the demand among local children for places. She emphasised that none of the migrants are “in school” as that is illegal but are accessing some form of formal schooling.
“Every local child would like to gain entry into one of the secondar
