Renu­ka Singh

Vac­ci­nat­ed stu­dents in Forms One, Two and Three will be al­lowed to at­tend in-per­son class­es in the next two weeks.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly yes­ter­day used her speak­ing time dur­ing the bud­get de­bate to make the an­nounce­ment.

“I have been au­tho­rised to say that, the sec­ond phase of our re­open­ing is be­ing con­sid­ered at this time and if all goes well, our forms one to three vac­ci­nat­ed Sec­ondary School chil­dren will join their peers in phys­i­cal class­es once all goes well. That is what is be­ing con­sid­ered at this time,” she said.

“At this time, our teach­ers are strad­dling two sys­tems and it is dif­fi­cult for them and we know that, we know it is dif­fi­cult,” she said.

She said that every year some 19,000 en­ter pri­ma­ry schools and a sim­i­lar num­ber sit the SEA ex­ams.

“It will do us well to know that as many as 48 per cent of these stu­dents score un­der 50 at SEA,” she said.

Gads­by-Dol­ly said that every part of the bud­get al­lo­cat­ed to her Min­istry went in­to process­es and sys­tems to im­prove the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.

“And if we didn’t have prob­lems enough, here comes COVID(19) fur­ther threat­en­ing our abil­i­ty to pro­vide eq­ui­table ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties and ex­ac­er­bat­ing learn­ing loss­es and the achieve­ment gap,” she said, adding that schools have been closed for over 19 months.

“So when we speak to keep­ing the on­line, let’s just keep the on­line, we are speak­ing about the cost to stu­dents whose lives may be de­railed be­cause of their ab­sence from the phys­i­cal school and that is a mas­sive cost,” she said.

She said that five months away from the phys­i­cal class­rooms equat­ed to tril­lions of dol­lars in loss­es in in­ter­na­tion­al mea­sure­ments.

She said the Gov­ern­ment pro­vid­ed more than just de­vices to stu­dents, they pro­vid­ed con­nec­tiv­i­ty, teacher train­ing and men­tal health sup­port.

“And that last as­pect is crit­i­cal be­cause this COVID sit­u­a­tion has tak­en a toll on our teach­ers, our par­ents, our coun­try,” she said.

Since 2020 50, 670 de­vices have been dis­trib­uted to teach­ers and stu­dents.

“Nine­ty per cent of these de­vices were de­liv­ered since 2020,” she said and thanked the pri­vate sec­tor for as­sist­ing with the sup­ply of de­vices.

She said that 10,000 Mi­Fi de­vices have al­ready been pro­cured and the State re­ceived 1,100 so far and dis­trib­uted them.

An­oth­er 5,000 is ex­pect­ed to ar­rive with­in weeks to be dis­trib­uted.