Penal/ Debe corporation gives out tablets to students

The Penal/Debe Regional Corporation (PDRC) distributed 50 electronic tablets to students from the area to help with distance learning owing to the pandemic.

“On a sad and unfortunate note, however, it signals the failure of the State to address the larger challenges within the education sector," said PDRC chairman Dr Allen Sammy.

"These include ICT (information and communications technology) reform to keep abreast with the needs of the evolving economic, social and cultural landscape.”

Sammy spoke at the distribution ceremony on Friday at the corporation’s building in Debe.

He quoted from a newspaper report in which Education Minister Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly highlighted some of the ministry's challenges like insufficient online resources for teachers, parents and students.

“What the minister is admitting to is the failure of her government to build on UNC’s initiatives from 2010 to 2015 in the areas of computer education and online learning,” Sammy said.

The PDRC is a UNC-led corporation. Sammy charged that in 2015, TT was the regional centre for virtual education in Latin America and the Caribbean in partnership with the Organization of American States.

He told the small gathering that thousands of teachers trained at varying levels for using ICT instructions in the curriculum back then. Sammy said the Education Ministry under the People Partnership government had achieved universal Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE).

“It was arguably the first country in the world to achieve universal ECCE in 2015. What the UNC achieved in government was to rapidly close the digital gap in keeping with international best practice,” Sammy said.

“On demitting office, of the 95,000 recipients of laptops, studies showed that 79 per cent of secondary school students were competent in manipulating documents and application.”

He called on the government to "rationally reinstate" the laptop distribution programme.