This week I spoke to a school vice prin­ci­pal (un­named due to Pub­lic Ser­vice reg­u­la­tions) who has raised the alarm that since the start of the COVID-19-pro­pelled dis­tance learn­ing eight months back, hun­dreds of the na­tions’ school­child­ren have dropped out of the school sys­tem.

“ ‘I am the prin­ci­pal of a high-risk school in a low-in­come area with gangs and gun ac­tiv­i­ty. 70 per cent of my stu­dents have de­vices, 60 per cent have in­ter­net ac­cess, and 90 per cent are us­ing smart­phones to at­tend on­line class­es. On­ly ten per cent have lap­tops. We have stu­dents who ask not to have their cam­eras on or to keep their mikes off due to an ad­verse home en­vi­ron­ment and find it a chal­lenge to carve a study space even if it’s against a blank wall.

‘Giv­ing out lap­tops en-mass is not the an­swer. In the past, we gave out lap­tops–they were de­stroyed with­in a month, sold by par­ents, or used to watch porn. School­child­ren should be giv­en lap­tops af­ter hav­ing a means test, so peo­ple can pay half, quar­ter, or noth­ing.

‘Cur­rent­ly, stu­dents have two op­tions for learn­ing: at­tend on­line class­es or come to school to pick up prepre­pared pack­ages on Mon­day and re­turn as­sign­ments to school by Fri­day. Stu­dents with­out in­ter­net ac­cess or de­vis­es who pick up pack­ages–up to 30 per cent are be­com­ing a sub­class. With­out in­ter­ac­tion, teacher su­per­vi­sion or struc­ture when they take home a ‘pack­age’, they are falling back and will find it im­pos­si­ble to rein­te­grate in­to a school sys­tem, even via Zoom. Oth­ers, eight months in­to re­mote learn­ing, even the bright, mo­ti­vat­ed ones are so de­sen­si­tised to school are not pur­su­ing ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion.

‘Ten per cent of stu­dents in my school, in Forms 4 and 5, have dropped off the face of the earth to work to help their fam­i­lies and this is hap­pen­ing in schools at­tend­ed by low-in­come stu­dents coun­try­wide.

‘Their ad­dress­es are in­cor­rect or in­com­plete, phone num­bers don’t work, and if you do con­nect, their par­ents say he or she "gone and work and not com­ing back.”

‘For these stu­dents with­out sup­port, the school was a safe space. Now we need to cre­ate safe­ty in their homes, so they don’t choose crime or drop out.

‘A one-size di­rec­tive from the top does not fit all.

‘Stu­dents ac­cess to the in­ter­net and abil­i­ty to use de­vise changes dai­ly de­pend­ing on their abil­i­ty to pay for on­line ac­cess. Zoom is al­ways be­ing up­dat­ed and re­quires in­creas­ing space.

‘The Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry needs to find out how each school is func­tion­ing and cater to var­ied needs. You could give me a lap­top, but I may not have elec­tric­i­ty. A phone or tablet may work bet­ter for some. Some schools need ex­tra ma­te­r­i­al for chil­dren go­ing home with pack­ages; flexi class time; or more soft­ware and tech­ni­cal train­ing.

‘We are see­ing on­line af­ter­noon ab­sen­teeism across the board, even in pres­tige schools.

‘The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has been col­lect­ing a data­base of par­ents and stu­dents for years. It's time they use it and get gov­ern­ment-based so­cial work­ers and agen­cies like the Chil­dren Pro­tec­tion Unit to vis­it high-risk stu­dents while lo­cat­ing pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tor fund­ing for these fam­i­lies.

‘We need gov­ern­ment in­ter­net, a free on­line re­search li­brary which school­child­ren can ac­cess with a user name and pass­word like parental con­trol.

‘Work­ing par­ents of­ten leave younger chil­dren for old­er chil­dren to su­per­vise at home. The Gov­ern­ment must en­cour­age em­ploy­ers to cre­ate spaces so par­ents can bring young chil­dren to work.

‘We have been in a pan­dem­ic for eight months. Schools have been shut since March 2020. Prin­ci­pals and teach­ers have risen to the chal­lenges of on­line learn­ing. The Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion has not had a sin­gle gen­er­al meet­ing with my school. There is on­ly top-down com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Maybe it’s dif­fer­ent in oth­er schools, but it’s dis­heart­en­ing when tech­nocrats who have nev­er taught a class are mak­ing de­ci­sions with­out con­sult­ing us. No­body is tak­ing our school is­sues to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion–nor do we get feed­back.

'The cur­rent sys­tem of re­mote teach­ing if not reme­died, will ir­repara­bly widen the gap be­tween the ‘haves’ and the ‘have not’ To plug the haem­or­rhag­ing of chil­dren’s hu­man po­ten­tial and cap­i­tal, high-risk schools like ours need di­a­logue not di­rec­tives.’”

As told to Ira Math­ur.