Yesterday city schools were mostly filled with the chatter of students engaged in leaning as parents who had keep their children at home last week allowed them to return to school.
Moreover the city seemed to have returned to normalcy; business were open, streets were busy and several city schools reported a turnout of 75% and over.
“…There was no longer and tension in people’s minds, it was just a normal busy Monday,” one parent told Stabroek News
One fifth former student from a senior secondary school told Stabroek News he felt safe now since “it is obvious that the perceived danger was a build-up of tension over delayed results and speculation that the former administration may have been up to something, but the elections are over, people got the change they wanted and its more of a celebratory atmosphere than hostile.”
Last week, despite being officially open schools at least in the city and on the east coast were empty.
When Stabroek News visited several schools in Georgetown and along the East Coast last week, it was observed that both public and private schools were either empty or nearly empty.
Popular private schools Green Acres, Mae’s and the New Guyana School were all closed, while Marian Academy reported an almost 50 % attendance rate.
St Margaret’s Primary and St Sidwell’s in Georgetown had no students present. The same was true for the Vryheid’s Lust Primary and LBI primary schools, while Beterverwagting Primary School had nine students out of 313 present and Enmore/Hope Primary School was closed, with a padlock on the gate, when this newspaper visited.
In secondary schools, it seemed that only those students who were scheduled to write Caribbean Secon-dary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations were present.
At Lodge Secondary, there were no students present on Thursday and only seven present on Wednesday.
Tutorial High School had what was described as “a handful of student’s present,” while Richard Ishmael Secondary only had the 25 students scheduled to write CSEC present on Thursday.
