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Thursday, July 10, 2025

New school term starts to­mor­row

Connectivity and mental health issues for students

by

1551 days ago
20210411
Flashback September 2020, students of four educational institutions will benefit from the first donation of devices through the Adopt-A-School Initiative. Education Minister Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly, second from right, and representatives of the Women in Action for the Needy and Destitute (WAND) organisation receive 25 devices on behalf of the Ministry at the Education Towers, Port-of-Spain. The laptops will be distributed to Chinapoo Government Primary School, Febeau Government Primary School, Couva Children’s Home and Crisis Nursery and Morvant Anglican Primary School.

Flashback September 2020, students of four educational institutions will benefit from the first donation of devices through the Adopt-A-School Initiative. Education Minister Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly, second from right, and representatives of the Women in Action for the Needy and Destitute (WAND) organisation receive 25 devices on behalf of the Ministry at the Education Towers, Port-of-Spain. The laptops will be distributed to Chinapoo Government Primary School, Febeau Government Primary School, Couva Children’s Home and Crisis Nursery and Morvant Anglican Primary School.

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION

Al­most six months af­ter Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly first an­nounced that a means test was be­ing de­signed to de­ter­mine which stu­dents gen­uine­ly need de­vices for on­line school­ing, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion (MOE) is set to im­ple­ment the new sys­tem this week. The means test was de­signed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment.

Schools will re­open to­mor­row but the most re­cent da­ta from the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry show that up to Feb­ru­ary, there were 35,700 stu­dents with­out elec­tron­ic de­vices to ac­cess on­line ed­u­ca­tion plat­forms—an im­prove­ment from last Oc­to­ber when Gads­by-Dol­ly es­ti­mat­ed there were ap­prox­i­mate­ly 65,000 stu­dents who were un­able to par­tic­i­pate in on­line learn­ing.

A ship­ment of 20,000 lap­tops is ex­pect­ed to ar­rive this month for dis­tri­b­u­tion to stu­dents in need.

On the is­sue of con­nec­tiv­i­ty, the min­is­ter said the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT) is “in the process of in­stalling con­nec­tiv­i­ty in 81 schools.”

She said the min­istry has so far dis­trib­uted 5,200 de­vices con­tain­ing SIM cards through TSTT, Dig­i­cel and TATT and an ad­di­tion­al 4,200 are be­ing pre­pared for de­liv­ery.

“Ne­go­ti­a­tions are on­go­ing by iGovTT with mi­fi providers to fi­nalise pro­cure­ment of these de­vices,” she said.

The mi­ni mo­bile hotspot de­vices will be dis­trib­uted to stu­dents who have not been able to prop­er­ly ac­cess on­line class­es. Dur­ing the Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert had an­nounced that 45,000 of the de­vices would be dis­trib­uted.

How­ev­er, the Na­tion­al Coun­cil of the Par­ent-Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (NCP­TA) is dis­put­ing the fig­ures giv­en by the Min­istry about the num­ber of stu­dents still re­quir­ing de­vices.

“Faulty de­vices would have sent those num­bers up and sev­er­al schools in the Ca­roni re­gion nev­er got any­thing from the ini­tial stage, mean­ing since the start of COVID-19. Now they are be­ing told that they have to re-ap­ply when the first re­quest was not ac­com­mo­dat­ed,” said NCP­TA PRO Shami­la Ra­heem

Ra­heem, who is ques­tion­ing the ra­tio­nale for the means test, point­ed out that “prin­ci­pals have been wait­ing since last year.” She is rec­om­mend­ing that pri­or­i­ty be placed on get­ting de­vices to pri­ma­ry school stu­dents.

“That’s their foun­da­tion ed­u­ca­tion and fo­cus should be put in­to that. There seems to be a bla­tant dis­par­i­ty in treat­ment of chil­dren across the coun­try as some dis­tricts are get­ting while oth­ers are get­ting ab­solute­ly noth­ing,” she said.

The NCP­TA said the dis­tri­b­u­tion of de­vices is a cru­cial area in which ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy are need­ed. She said wire­less ac­cess is the best op­tion to en­sure stu­dents in rur­al ar­eas can ac­cess on­line class­es.

“Pack­ages are not enough. Teach­ing in quite a few schools are not tak­ing place. Up­load­ing work on Google Class­room, What­sApp and prepar­ing pack­ages are not teach­ing meth­ods. Chil­dren and par­ents are hav­ing ma­jor chal­lenges with the new learn­ing sys­tem. Par­ents are not teach­ers. They can on­ly as­sist and guide. Some teach­ers are on­ly do­ing the ba­sics,” she said.

Ra­heem claimed some teach­ers prof­it­ing from con­duct­ing pri­vate lessons and asked: “Who is hold­ing them ac­count­able for such? On one hand, we have some teach­ers who are very ded­i­cat­ed and go the ex­tra mile for their chil­dren. They ought to be ap­plaud­ed for their hard work and com­mit­ment. But what is hap­pen­ing to chil­dren whose par­ents can­not af­ford pri­vate lessons as this seems to be a new norm as well”

Con­cerns about

men­tal health

In Jan­u­ary, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry of­fi­cials ad­mit­ted the pan­dem­ic and lock­down had an ad­verse ef­fect on the men­tal health of teach­ers and stu­dents. More teach­ers have been ac­cess­ing the Em­ploy­ee As­sis­tance Pro­gramme (EAP) and ac­cord­ing to School So­cial Work Spe­cial­ist Na­tal­ie Robin­son-Arnold, there had been many re­quests for help, main­ly from sec­ondary stu­dents. She at­trib­uted this to the “whole ad­just­ment of be­ing at home, be­ing re­moved from the so­cial at­mos­phere that they are used to in the school sys­tem” which had “cre­at­ed a lit­tle in­sta­bil­i­ty in our chil­dren and ba­si­cal­ly, it is gen­er­al be­hav­iour that our par­ents have reached out to us about.”

Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly ac­knowl­edged then that teach­ers were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing stress with the tran­si­tion from the phys­i­cal class­room to a vir­tu­al fo­rum.

“School so­cial work­ers have been and will con­tin­ue to pro­vide ser­vices as need­ed, both on­line and face to face where re­quired and pos­si­ble,” she said.

Gads­by-Dol­ly al­so en­cour­aged teach­ers, “to take ad­van­tage of all the train­ing avail­able from the MOE and oth­er sources which will make de­liv­ery eas­i­er over time.”

“The Em­ploy­ee As­sis­tance Pro­gramme for teach­ers is avail­able to as­sist with main­tain­ing men­tal health and well­ness, and has been pro­vid­ing valu­able ser­vice dur­ing this time.”

On the is­sue of burn-out and fa­tigue among stu­dents, Gads­by-Dol­ly said: “Yes, I am al­so a par­ent and see­ing the fa­tigue in my chil­dren, both at the sec­ondary and ter­tiary lev­el. We as par­ents have to do our best to en­cour­age our chil­dren, pay­ing spe­cial at­ten­tion to their men­tal health, and work­ing to­geth­er with the teach­ers for the best re­sult in what con­tin­ues to be a very dif­fi­cult time.”

Ra­heem said while Stan­dard Five stu­dents and their par­ents had been an­tic­i­pat­ing a re­turn to the class­room and it is dis­ap­point­ing that “the care­less and ir­re­spon­si­ble be­hav­iour of some adults con­tin­ue to be a bar­ri­er for this to be pos­si­ble.”

She said: “Imag­ine chil­dren who nev­er want­ed to go to school in the past now want to go. They are hav­ing eye and back is­sues from too much screen time, men­tal and phys­i­cal is­sues, frus­tra­tion and anx­i­ety, stress be­cause they don’t un­der­stand the work. Learn­ing at home and learn­ing at school are two dif­fer­ent things.

“They say that these are not nor­mal times and a new nor­mal for learn­ing, yet they are hav­ing nor­mal ex­ams. Why? When these chil­dren did not have nor­mal school or nor­mal teach­ing.”

The NCP­TA’s PRO added: “More than be­fore, the stress lev­els are in­creas­ing dai­ly, es­pe­cial­ly for our Stan­dard Five stu­dents. Dropouts are tak­ing place, es­pe­cial­ly with sec­ondary schools, be­cause fam­i­lies are hav­ing fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties and can­not cope with ba­sic re­quire­ments so the chil­dren have to go out and find work to sup­port the house­hold.”

Ra­heem said stu­dents are “burnt out and just plain fed up.”

She added: “They are sad and some are suf­fer­ing from de­pres­sion. We re­al­ly feel for these chil­dren and need to do our best to help them on all fronts.”


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