An­na-Lisa Paul

Two years af­ter schools in T&T were forced to close their doors due to the COVID-19 virus and move to an on­line modal­i­ty, ed­u­ca­tion stake­hold­ers are hap­py they have been able to re­open – al­beit on a phased ba­sis.

How­ev­er, as they an­tic­i­pate a full re­sump­tion of class­es in the com­ing months, of­fi­cials said their main pri­or­i­ty was to con­tin­ue pre­serv­ing the health and safe­ty of all stu­dents, as well as the teach­ing and aux­il­iary per­son­nel on their com­pounds.

Com­ment­ing on the full re­turn to in-per­son op­er­a­tions yes­ter­day, Vi­jay Ma­haraj said, “I am hap­py that we have opened up and our Forms One to Six at sec­ondary schools are out, even though there is a ro­ta­tion.”

Ma­haraj is the act­ing gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS).

Call­ing for greater per­ma­nen­cy when the third aca­d­e­m­ic term be­gins in April fol­low­ing the East­er va­ca­tion, he ap­plaud­ed the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s in­tend­ed move to have all pri­ma­ry school stu­dents re­turn to the phys­i­cal class­room.

He said, “School is a safer en­vi­ron­ment than at home right now be­cause of the num­ber of pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures that are be­ing tak­en as far as san­i­tiz­ing is con­cerned.

“The most chal­leng­ing thing dur­ing the last two years has been the on­line school­ing,” he added.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing sev­er­al in­ci­dents of vi­o­lence among sec­ondary school stu­dents dur­ing the past sev­er­al weeks, he claimed, “Chil­dren are on a very, very short fuse.”

He at­trib­uted this to a num­ber of rea­sons, in­clud­ing chil­dren go­ing to school with less mon­ey.

The SDMS head con­tin­ued, “We need to get them in­volved in ex­tracur­ric­u­lar sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties once again, and oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties of that na­ture.

“Our chil­dren have been in a lock­down…in a co­matose state and oth­er than a lit­tle tablet or com­put­er, they had no con­nec­tion with the out­side world and that has done a lot of dam­age to them on a phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal ba­sis.”

Ma­haraj said the rest of the world had al­ready opened back up, whilst T&T was now look­ing to es­tab­lish a new nor­mal which stu­dents would now have to get ac­cus­tomed to.

Catholic Ed­u­ca­tion Board of Man­age­ment (CEBM) CEO Sharon Mungroo said as they look for­ward to a phys­i­cal re­turn to school­ing, sev­er­al is­sues are of con­cern.

“Dis­tance ed­u­ca­tion is not a re­place­ment for face to face school­ing.”

And just like the SDMS, the CEBM head said checks with school prin­ci­pals re­gard­ing Stan­dard Five stu­dents con­firmed, “Many of the stu­dents have gaps in con­cep­tu­al knowl­edge.”

“Some stu­dents did not ac­cess on­line class­es or did so in­fre­quent­ly. Teach­ers agree that the pa­per-based at­tempts at in­struc­tion were the least suc­cess­ful.”

Mungroo re­flect­ed on the chal­lenges they had faced in the last two years, as she said dis­tance mode chal­lenges had in­clud­ed the pro­vi­sion of adult su­per­vi­sion, ac­cess to de­vices and con­nec­tiv­i­ty.

She said of­fi­cials had to ad­dress the “learn­ing gaps on an in­di­vid­ual ba­sis so that the al­ready dis­ad­van­taged stu­dents do not fall fur­ther be­hind.”

Mungroo re­vealed, “Catholic (De­nom­i­na­tion­al) Boards have not re­ceived funds for the school year for pro­cure­ment of con­sum­able ma­te­ri­als so san­i­ta­tion is an is­sue. We have used up do­na­tions.”

Com­ment­ing on the hap­pen­ings of the past two years, the Con­cerned Par­ents Move­ment of T&T (CPMTT) said what stood out the most for them was, “the ease at which stu­dents were able to use lack of ac­cess to de­vices to fall through the cracks and out of the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.”

Oth­er ob­sta­cles which hin­dered on­line teach­ing and learn­ing, es­pe­cial­ly when it came to gov­ern­ment-run schools, was the in­or­di­nate­ly long pe­ri­od of time it took for them to tran­si­tion to on­line class­es.

CPMTT head Clarence Men­doza said, “I’m al­so con­cerned that COVID pro­to­cols were be­ing used as a mea­sure to pre­vent vis­its to schools from con­cerned par­ents, where more prac­ti­cal meth­ods such as email and tele­phone went unan­swered.”

Ad­mit­ting the most chal­leng­ing as­pect had been main­tain­ing stu­dent at­ten­dance and par­tic­i­pa­tion, he added, “With the re­open­ing of schools, I would like to see the con­tin­ued use of tech­nol­o­gy.”

He al­so called on, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to “put for­ward a rein­te­gra­tion pro­gramme on men­tal health is­sues and chal­lenges that may have been de­rived from the two-year COVID-19 lock­down that would have af­fect­ed both stu­dents and teach­ers.”

Echo­ing con­cerns re­ceived from par­ents, Na­tion­al Par­ent Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion’s Zena Ra­matali said many of them want to en­sure there is open and con­stant com­mu­ni­ca­tion with school of­fi­cials on the health of chil­dren.

“Many of them are con­cerned about the well-be­ing of their chil­dren in terms of con­tract­ing the virus,” she stat­ed.

She said at­ten­tion al­so must be paid to de­ter­min­ing who were the school drop-outs and why – and en­sure ef­forts are made to get them back in­to school so their ed­u­ca­tion is not fur­ther dis­rupt­ed.

CLICK FOR MORE NEWS