On Fri­day March 13 last year, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced to the Par­lia­ment that all places of learn­ing in­clu­sive of schools and uni­ver­si­ties would re­main closed for one week in or­der to slow the po­ten­tial spread of COVID-19.

Stu­dents of North­Gate Col­lege re­mem­ber that day all too well.

They re­fer to it in jest as “Black Fri­day.”

For the past 19 months with the ex­cep­tion of ex­ams, phys­i­cal schools have re­mained closed.

How­ev­er, to­mor­row this is ex­pect­ed to change as stu­dents from forms four to six are sched­uled to re­turn to the school.

And, with this ex­pect­ed re­turn to the phys­i­cal schools, the di­rec­tor of North­Gate Col­lege Yolande La Pierre says her school is ready.

“For North­Gate, like every­one, March 2020 was sud­den but, while it was sud­den it was not dif­fi­cult as it was not cat­a­stroph­ic,” she told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian.

La Pierre said there are sev­er­al el­e­ments that have added to the school’s suc­cess in deal­ing with the sit­u­a­tion.

“One was that we built re­la­tion­ships over the years, so way be­fore we talk about tech­nol­o­gy and the chang­ing of the ex­ter­nal in­fra­struc­ture there is an in­ter­nal set of re­la­tion­ships in­side North­Gate that makes it work,” she said.

“We have a staff that is re­al­ly com­mit­ted, very will­ing to move and be flex­i­ble and ad­justable. We have a home-school con­nec­tion that is very, very strong,” La Pierre said.

She said even be­fore the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic was on peo­ple’s radars, North­Gate was util­is­ing on­line tech­nol­o­gy to en­hance their class­rooms.

“So we al­ready had some mea­sure of de­vel­op­ment that al­lowed us to make a fair­ly quick tran­si­tion,” she said.

La Pierre said North­Gate is more than a phys­i­cal school.

“We have al­ways said we are more than cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. We have to have a bal­ance and with the change to on­line school we were com­mit­ted to find­ing that bal­ance,” she said.

Dur­ing that time the school had vir­tu­al sports day, cook­ing com­pe­ti­tions and con­certs to en­sure the chil­dren were al­ways kept in­ter­est­ed.

But through­out it all La Pierre said the school was prepar­ing for the re­turn to phys­i­cal class­rooms.

And even as that time has now come she said none of the stu­dents even those who re­main at home will be left be­hind.

“Even if we have stu­dents that are not vac­ci­nat­ed who are not able to come to the cam­pus at this time they will not find them­selves in a deficit po­si­tion,” La Pierre said.

To en­sure that there was no de­fi­cien­cy, the school’s founder Dr Noel Woodroffe called for the cre­ation of a hy­brid sys­tem to en­sure all stu­dents are can learn.

While the school had been util­is­ing Google Meet be­fore Woodroffe felt that more need to be done to close the gaps that had been ex­pe­ri­enced.

And so Wood­ing cre­at­ed the ground­breakn­ing Edu­Flex sys­tem which al­lows stu­dents to be a part of the class room set­ting.

The school in­clud­ed phys­i­cal changes for the stu­dents in­clud­ing plex­i­glass in­stalled around desks, phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing in class­rooms, wash bays, and the in­tro­duc­tion of the Edu­Flex sys­tem.

“We spoke about how do we build a syn­chro­nous sys­tem that al­lows stu­dents who are not phys­i­cal­ly here to stream in­to a class­room and have the same kind of ex­pe­ri­ence,” La Pierre said.

North­Gate cur­rent­ly boasts a “very good” vac­ci­na­tion rate with at least 80 per cent in each of the el­i­gi­ble forms tak­ing the COVID-19 vac­cine as well as 100 per cent among teach­ers and sup­port staff.

The Edu­Flex sys­tem is said to be able to over­come some of the chal­lenges that are cur­rent­ly faced with the on­go­ing on­line plat­form sys­tems be­ing used.

“The tech­nol­o­gy de­signed was based on the phi­los­o­phy be­hind how we want to en­sure that all of the stu­dents and their teach­ers are able to pro­vide a learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence with min­i­mal dis­rup­tion,” Con­gress WBN chief knowl­edge of­fi­cer Bevil Wood­ing stat­ed.

Wood­ing was tasked with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty by Woodroffe to cor­rect the prob­lem of en­sur­ing that stu­dents and teach­ers can learn to­geth­er.

“So Edu­flex is both a com­bi­na­tion of soft­ware and hard­ware,” Wood­ing said.

The school’s cam­pus lo­cat­ed along Wil­son Street in St Au­gus­tine has been out­fit­ted with in­fra­struc­tur­al changes to en­sure the EduFk­lex sys­tem works.

“Of course the cam­pus fa­cil­i­ty had to be up­grad­ed to sup­port that so if you take this class­room as an ex­am­ple you will see there is a speak­er, there is a cam­era, there is a smart fa­cil­i­ty on the white­board to do your writ­ing,” Wood­ing said.

Wood­ing said changes were al­so made to up­grade the pow­er sup­ply to the school.

“We had to en­sure that ca­bling was done over so that we can bring all of the au­dio and video sig­nals in­to each of the class­es in a way that will be seam­less to the teacher. The idea was sim­ple, en­sure a teacher can walk in­to a class as they might have in 2019 and we did a ses­sion with­out hav­ing to wor­ry about ca­bles and but­tons,” he said.

Wood­ing said Edu­Flex al­so en­sures that peo­ple could utilise it with a low band­width.

“We had to fac­tor in the sit­u­a­tion that not every­body will have the most cur­rent de­vices, so it is de­signed to be run on de­vices that have very low pow­er and low pro­cess­ing speeds,” he said.

In ad­di­tion to that Wood­ing said the sys­tem was cre­at­ed to en­sure that those who are not tech-savvy will be able to use it with min­i­mal tech­ni­cal in­tru­sion.

“Edu­flex is tech­nol­o­gy en­abling ed­u­ca­tion in a way that fa­cil­i­tates the most seam­less and less dis­rup­tive learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence,” he said.

Co-Chair­man Dr Mar­lon Jame­son said since North­Gate was es­tab­lished in 1999 it has al­ways been about en­sur­ing that stu­dents were giv­en an over­all ed­u­ca­tion.

This, he said, has nev­er changed de­spite the pan­dem­ic and the chal­lenges it has caused.

“We are not on­ly con­cerned about the aca­d­e­m­ic de­vel­op­ment of our chil­dren but the de­vel­op­ment of the char­ac­ter of our chil­dren,” Jamer­son said.

He laud­ed Woodroffe’s lead­er­ship which he said al­ways re­mains fu­ture-dri­ven and there­fore was able to tack­le the dif­fi­cul­ties caused by the pan­dem­ic head-on.