With schools due to reopen in two weeks, the Barbados Union of Teachers is awaiting the Ministry of Education Transformation’s response to proposed changes to school assistants’ hours to support the breakfast programme, which takes effect when the term starts on September 7.

BUT president Rudy Lovell told Barbados TODAY the union has no outstanding concerns about the breakfast programme itself but insisted that teachers will not be involved, while remaining cautiously optimistic that schools will be ready for the new term.

“We were negotiating with the ministry regarding the school assistants who we represent, who were earmarked to be part of the breakfast programme but other than that, in terms of the breakfast programme, we had a meeting with the ministry and we have discuss any concerns that we had at the time.