The Trinidad and Tobago Unified Teachers’ Association is accusing the Ministry of Education of putting schools at risk by replacing experienced business operations assistants (BOAs) with on-the-job trainees (OJTs), warning that principals could be left struggling under an increased administrative burden.TTUTA president Crystal Ashe yesterday spoke to the Express in a phone interview about the ministry’s decision to deploy 200 OJTs to fill BOA vacancies across about 450 schools.He questioned how the on-the-job trainees would effectively support principals when they may not have been adequately prepared for the role.He said under the OJT programme, “the presumption is lacking of the skills necessary to do the job, because they would not have been prepared for this particular portfolio before.”He also questioned the ministry’s proposed training for trainees who would replace the BOAs.“The ministry is saying that they are going to send them on some two-day AI workshop or something. I don’t know what that means. I can’t see how that will prepare them for the work, because a business operations assistant—their job is to assist the principal in the execution of his or her duties,” Ashe stated.He also expressed concerns about the confidentiality required for the position, noting that BOAs may have access to sensitive information concerning students, teachers and other school matters.“A BOA will be well poised to know that they cannot remove that information from that working location to go anywhere to do anything like that,” said the TTUTA president.He also emphasised the impact of replacing experienced staff members with trainees whose contracts were generally limited to two years, warning that the resulting high turnover would be “unacceptable”.Ashe said removing BOAs could place additional pressure on principals, who are expected to focus on instructional leadership.“Principals, trying to be diligent and trying to make sure that they do everything possible to prop up the education system”, have already found ways to cope with the loss of BOAs, he said.Despite this, Ashe rejected the suggestion that principals’ ability to cope without BOAs meant the positions were no longer necessary.He speculated, based on the Education Ministry’s move to replace BOAs with OJTs, that “the ministry said—well, you all did it for a year, then you all don’t need the BOAs.”Ashe said the association disagreed and argued that the ability of principals to keep schools functioning despite reduced administrative support should not be used as justification for removing experienced BOAs from the system.“At the end of the day, what we are seeing is that the Minister of Education is just looking for cheap labour, for want of a better word, to fill some very important positions in the education system,” he said.“And we don’t agree with that at all.”