Mixed success in start to school year in west
Published:Tuesday | October 6, 2020 | 6:22 AMChristopher Thomas/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
Yesterday’s start to the 2020-2021 academic year was marred by access challenges for many students in western Jamaica wishing to log in to virtual classrooms.
Fears by educators of a lack of adequate Internet connectivity and equipment were realised although they had hoped for an improvement on what obtained at the tail end of the last school year when COVID-19 forced classes online.
Richard Miller, principal of the Farm Primary and Junior High School in St James, said that roughly half of his students were not able to report for school yesterday.
“Currently, we are engaging probably about 50 to 60 per cent of our students as several of them have no access to the Internet or a gadget to use, and so the challenges are great,” he told The Gleaner. “But we are working as much as we can in collaboration with the Ministry of Education to alleviate these challenges.”
It was a similar struggle at St Paul’s Primary School in Westmoreland, where Principal Camille Davis-Williams may have to resort to resuming the delivery of printed materials to her pupils so they are not totally left in the cold.
“Monday was a day filled with challenges because a lot of my students do not have any devices on which to meet me in my Google Classroom. Less than a quarter of my students from grades one to six have access to the Google Classroom,” said Davis-Williams. “My struggle remains to the extent that I have to contemplate using printed material again, which I did not want to do.”
At Green Pond High School, also in St James, acting Principal Alicia Ellis-Spence reported that some 673 students from grades seven to nine logged in to the school’s online platform for orientation sessions.
“We started Monday with a bang,” she said. “For grade seven, we had over 220 persons online and they received their timetables and email addresses, while we had over 205 grade eight students logging on in their uniform and ready for learning. For grade nine, we had 248 students,” said Ellis-Spence, satisfied with the turnout.
Keith Wellington, principal of St Elizabeth Technical High School, reported similar success with his school’s online platform, with the only hurdle being that some parents are currently requesting help to connect their devices.
“We are probably a little bit ahead of the process because we had our own Google Space platform, but not every student is on it, and we are finding a lot of parents coming now to ask for help to set up their devices for it,” he said.
“Teachers have started with their classes online, but we are trying to get more persons on it,” Wellington added.
Over 500,000 students are registered in Jamaica at the early childhood, primary, and secondary levels.