‘We are losing our students’

As the country embarks on the new academic year primarily continuing the online modality, local educators have given the Ministry of Education’s recent summer school programme – aimed at bridging the learning loss for students who did not access online learning in the last school year – a mediocre grade.

The Ministry of Education estimates that 120,000 students were unable to take up online instruction for one or more reasons in the last academic year, including not having an electronic device or internet access to attend classes since the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools last year March.

The ministry was hoping to resume face-to-face classes this September and that the summer school programme would have helped disenfranchised students come up to speed, but a physical return to the classroom had to be put on hold because Jamaica is now firmly in a vice-like grip of the third wave of the virus, which is even more devastating than the first two waves.

This has compounded the learning gaps even more, as some educators at traditionally poorer-performing schools say many students who really needed the intervention did not turn up for the summer classes or did not attend consistently enough to make an impact. The teaching and learning times were also too short, they said.

“We are losing them, we have basically lost them,” grade coordinator at Central High School, Onnicka Minott, who also coordinated the summer school classes there, told The Gleaner.

Central High, located in the heart of several low-income communities in May Pen, Clarendon, plagued by violence, traditionally gets the students who perform the poorest on the primary exit examination. The socio-economic background and academic levels of the students make for a challenging teaching and learning situation and has, sadly, earned the school the reputation of being one of the poorer-performing upgraded high schools.

“We started out with about 370 students and ended with about 350 by the third week. The grade eight and nine did the same mathematics diagnostic test and the grade nines performed poorly,” Minott said of the recent summer school initiative.

“We really see that we are going to have problems for the new school year, and the feedback from the teachers is that they are disappointed because a lot of the students are lost.”

The main challenge to the success of the programme, which some parents also agreed, was the length of time allocated.

“The time was too short. It was a good initiative but the time they got for each day was too short,” Minott said.

Speaking to the difficulties some students at her school have with learning via online, she said while they will sit and listen, “they need the interaction with the teacher to reinforce the concepts, so with the one hour per day, the learning gap is still wide”.

Principal of Old Harbour High in St Catherine, Linton Weir, while lauding the intervention, also lamented the time allotted.

“We had about 220 students participating in the programme,” Weir said. “But I think it could have been strengthened a little bit more. I was hoping that it would run for a longer period. I was also expecting that it would be more than just two days for the week and two hours for each day. I think it was extremely short. If it was longer, our students would have been able to get much more,” the former president of the Association of Principals and Vice-Principals said.

Two other senior teachers at another high school in Clarendon, who both wished not to be named, also lamented the duration and ultimate impact of the programme.

“It was not successful because we didn’t even see a half of the ones who really need the intervention,” one teacher said.

For the other: “Our school decided that we were going to focus on our fifth-formers, in all subjects, as long as teachers were available. But the students did not turn out. The ones that we needed to see were the ones who stayed home. It was the same ones who were online that came out so it still did not work out the way we would have wanted. The parents needed to have sent out the children,” the near 20-year veteran educator said.

ACHIEVED ITS GOAL

According to the education ministry, 33,099 students attended the face-to-face classes throughout the summer school programme, with 3,576 teachers across all regions. It said online classes were also held, with 25,064 continuously engaged throughout the initiative.

“The initiative achieved its goal of reaching those students who were not accessing instructional support during the last school year,” the ministry of education said via written responses.

It said, among other things, the teachers are now equipped to plan for the students who are in need of one-on-one support since the sessions helped to identify some of the weaknesses and strengths in the students.

Focus was also given to students going into grade 11, the ministry said, with grade 10 students engaged in sessions specifically for School Based Assessment preparations, as well as attention paid to core subjects such as English A, and mathematics.

The ministry now has a $226-million pay bill for teachers who worked with the programme.

For its part, the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) says it has already begun internal discussions regarding the treatment of the now grade 11 batch of students, considering the impact of the pandemic.

“This is a general thing that we would do. And as you can well imagine, it would have started even while we were doing our different marking and assessment,” Dr Nicole Manning, CXC’s director of operations, told The Gleaner.

PARENTS WANT CHILDREN BACK IN THE CLASSROOM

Meanwhile, the reality of many children who were unable to access online learning seems much the same.

“Online school not going anywhere,” 36-year-old Nordia Manning, a mother of five from Foga in Mocho, Clarendon, told The Gleaner, adding that she was praying for the resumption of face-to-face classes.

The trouble is, Nordia was not able to take her one high school-aged child to a vaccination centre during the youth vaccination blitz held last month, as she had no money for transportation to get to the closest site, which was in Denbigh, a far jump from her rural top-Clarendon community.

The education ministry is aiming to get all students over the age of 12 vaccinated, in order to resume face-to-face classes.

The Government’s student inoculation drive saw 25,442 students vaccinated between August 21 and 24, according to Ministry of Health data.

But: “Suppose you don’t have the money to get a taxi to get to the blitz?” Nordia reasoned. “Where I live, taxis do not run frequently so if I am to get a car to take my son to the vaccine centre, that would be at least $2,000 to $2,500.”

That money would have to come from what she has earmarked for groceries for the household, she said.

None of Nordia’s children attended the summer school consistently either, because there was not enough funds for bus fare.

“The one that attends Glenmuir went couple times,” she said.

The best bet for her children to continue their education is for schools to resume face-to-face classes, she said.

“Online school is really a challenge. Finding food for them is hard, too, because when they are at home they eat more, but it’s best if they go back to school they will learn more,” she said.

The same holds true for Sylvia Mattis*, also of Mocho, Clarendon.

“My daughter who goes to Vere Technical couldn’t access most of her classes on the online system. She has a phone that she used but we weren’t getting proper internet so I don’t like the online learning one bit. I need school to reopen,” Mattis declared.

While the summer school helped her daughter to brush up on some areas, especially since she is entering grade 11, she was also “hoping for a longer time”.

WAIT AND SEE

As COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc across the world, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) has recommended that member countries adopt a phased approach to reopening schools for face-to-face learning.

PAHO Director Dr Carissa Etienne says this approach should be weighed against the country’s epidemiological situation, which, she noted, “can change rapidly”.

Provided schools are unable to fully reopen, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has also called for Jamaica’s education ministry to “provide tailored remedial learning options for children who have been assessed to have the greatest needs”.

Citing a World Bank Study, UNICEF says Jamaica stands to lose 1.3 years in learning-adjusted years of schooling “or an average annual earning loss per student of US$1,099, which aggregates to a total lifetime earning loss of US$5.5 billion – a third of Jamaica’s GDP.”

Ms Minott’s students may be trying to mitigate this financial fallout as they are often seen in the town of May Pen vending, she said.

Fayval Williams, Jamaica’s education minister, said the Government would reassess the situation later this month to determine when students will be able to physically return to the classroom.

*Name changed on request.

tameka.gordon@gleanerjm.com