The Barbados Union of Teachers (BUT) has called for the immediate temporary closure of St Paul’s Primary School after more than 100 students were reported absent following a suspected outbreak of gastroenteritis.
The union said the incident highlighted wider environmental and health concerns affecting schools across the island.
BUT vice-president André Holder said officials were troubled by a growing number of health issues, ranging from illness outbreaks to sanitation problems, since the start of the year.
Holder spoke to reporters on Wednesday outside the Brittons Cross Road school, where high levels of student absenteeism have been recorded in recent days.
According to him, more than 100 students were absent up to Tuesday. While not all cases were directly linked to illness, a significant number were believed to be connected to the suspected outbreak, with others staying home out of caution.
“This morning we are seeing a high level of absenteeism among the student population at the school, this is due to a suspected case of suspected outbreak of gastroenteritis within the school, most precisely within the hall area. Up to yesterday we had over 100 students absent,” Holder said.
“I’m not saying all were for gastroenteritis, some maybe was out of the abundance of caution from the parents, but there definitely was a significant number of cases and number of students who would have been affected by the outbreak in the school.”
Despite the concerns, the school remained open, though Holder noted that attendance was noticeably low even as some sections, including the junior block, continued to be occupied.
The union is now recommending a temporary closure of the institution to allow for thorough cleaning and sanitisation.
Holder said: “We would love to see the hall clean because based on the high numbers we would have experienced so far, it can’t be normal. There’s definitely something wrong and we would like to see at least the school closed for the remainder of the week where we could be allowed to clean and ventilate adequately and we’re assured that by next week, Monday, school could return as normal.”
Holder stressed that the situation at St Paul’s Primary reflects wider concerns across the education system, pointing to recent reports of cowitch exposure, as well as rodent and cockroach infestations at other schools.
“We are very concerned that we are taking all matters very seriously. We know there was some reports of cowitch recently, there also have some rodent infestation, cockroach infestation across various schools, and we are taking all these matters very seriously because we take the lives of our teachers and the students very, very seriously,” he said.
He suggested that increased maintenance is urgently needed across campuses: “We would like to see some more maintenance definitely being done to schools.”
The Ministry of Health conducted a tour of the school on Monday, while the Ministry of Education Transformation was formally informed of the situation.
Officials from the education ministry did not immediately respond to Barbados TODAY’s request for comment on the situation.
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