Are we ready for a return to school?

AS WE work towards getting our students back to school physically, we (all of us – policymakers, parents, educators, the public) must carefully consider this issue, the challenges, the opportunities, and the implications. Over the past three weeks or more the Ministry of Education has been developing a plan for the return to school. In the process ministry official have been meeting with TTUTA and other stakeholders as they attempt to arrive at a workable, low-risk plan aimed at redounding to the benefit of all.

What are the issues and challenges? Since March 2020 (17 months and counting), our students have been away from the classroom. The first response was to engage in emergency remote learning using both online modalities and take-home packages to be collected and returned to the school. This, as we are all too familiar with, arose because of covid19 being declared a global pandemic with very little information about the virus, its evolution and the response that would be necessary to address the situation. The immediate focus was on saving lives and livelihoods.

By September 2020, after an informal arrangement to provide some level of schooling during the period April to July of that year, the ministry had devised a plan for attempting to ensure that students received some level of structured education. This plan characterised the academic year 2020/2021 and made use of a hybrid system that formalised the use of online learning and the continued use of take-home packages.

However, the dilemma created by educating in the context of covid19 began to reveal the cracks and inequities in our education system. In the first instance, online learning required a national digital network with broad national reach. This we did not have. No one can argue with the fact that our students in far-flung rural districts were disadvantaged by lack of access.

This was further compounded by the influence of socio-economic status, often low-middle to low-income households who may not have been able to afford devices to satisfy the needs of their families, particularly in households with multiple children ranging in age from preschool to secondary.

This was also further compounded by the fact that the take-home packages initiative was not yielding the expected results since packages either were not collected, or in instances in which they were collected they were often not returned for assessment and feedback. What has been the result? Like has occurred globally, many children have fallen off the education track and are being left behind – the quality of their future severely challenged by the ongoing impact of the pandemic.

Given the foregoing, can we talk about opportunities? With intermittent ongoing lockdowns depending on the level of viral infection in the population, with high employment brought about by the measures instituted and families facing many challenges to stay afloat, what opportunities are there to restore some semblance of normalcy to educating our children? If we are to make any steps to recovery, we must carefully examine what opportunities exist and the steps that we can take to capitalise on these.

Silvia Montoya, director of UNESCO’s Institute of Statistics, declares “measuring loss is a critical step towards mitigating its consequences.” The implication? As a country we need to find a way to measure the learning loss that has been experienced. In teaching, we assess, intervene, and evaluate the impact of our intervention. The ministry can do no less in this situation.

Additionally, the capacity of our Student Support Services Division must be strengthened as remediation must be part of our response and recovery strategy. Indeed, Roland Jenkins, UNICEF global chief of education, tells us that beyond the urgent need of getting our students back into school, we need to “implement remedial programmes to help children get back on track.”

Improving technology on our school campuses is also a priority. One of the lessons the pandemic has taught us is the importance of being able to capitalise on technology-mediated learning which cannot occur effectively if the context is not created for it. An important addendum to this is improving equity in access. All our children, despite their location in our small country must be able to have access to connectivity and devices if they are to have a fair chance at successfully recovering.

There is more that can be said on this topic. As we inch closer and closer to the scheduled opening day, we will continue to address this matter.