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WHILE most of Trinidad and Tobago’s teenagers benefit from free government-funded education, one Arima child has been left behind.

Fourteen-year-old Annalisa (not her real name) has not attended secondary school for a combined total of two years. The Calvary Hill resident passed her SEA examinations in 2023 and was assigned to a secondary school along the East-West Corridor, but what should have marked a new beginning, instead turned into a nightmare.

On a quiet morning at their modest Arima home, Annalisa sat silently on the veranda, her hands clasped on her thighs, as her mother Cynthia (not her real name) revisited the events that shattered her daughter’s school life.