Education Minister Dr Tim Gopeesingh stated on Friday that parents should not pay any kind of fees when registering their children at state-funded secondary schools throughout Trinidad and Tobago.The minister said he knows that many schools charge a variety of fees on registration including caution fees, security fees and even photocopying.
However he advised parents not to pay "one penny" because the Ministry of Education has a strict policy that states that "there should be no fees charged for any registrations whatsoever".
Gopeesingh said, "We are going to send out another circular and anybody found in contempt of that we will have to determine what should be done about it...because parents should not be forced to have to pay for something in the schools. The school system is free"
Many schools ask parents to pay for certain services claiming that they lack adequate funding from government.
Gopeesingh dismissed that as a rationale for collecting fees, saying if schools need more money, "they should seek it from the Ministry".
He said, "I am certain that the Permanent Secretaries will look at it because schools are given money on a yearly basis. They have annual budgets and they are also given things for their conduct of the school during the year.
"So this has become a practice that I, as the Minster of Education, do not accept, and I will try to remove that from the system," he said.
He suggested that schools that need additional funding over the allocated budgets should come up with innovative fund-raising methods.
"This is why we had the meetings with the principals’ association, the secondary schools and the denominational boards. Of course within your budget you are sometimes constrained by the limitations... and we understand that.
"That is why we will have to work with the Parent-Teacher Association and the school boards, and have a volunteer issue rather than a compulsory issue," he said.
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