Pinnock: Dual-mode learning still in place for students

WESTERN BUREAU:

Dr Michelle Pinnock, regional director for the Ministry of Education’s Region Four, says plans remain in place to balance rotational face-to-face learning with virtual learning if the established COVID-19 vaccination rate of 65 per cent for students is not attained in time for the Easter school term, which gets under way next week.

Speaking to The Gleaner on Tuesday, Pinnock said that while efforts are being made to meet the required vaccination numbers, students who are doing external exams and labs will be facilitated for face-to-face lessons.

“If the vaccination rate does not get to the required 65 per cent, the schools will continue online, and the students that are doing their exit exams will come in to do their labs, whether it be City & Guilds, NCTVET, CSEC, or CAPE,” she said, referencing the different examinations.

She added that the schools are pushing for the resumption of face-to-face classes and are working with the Ministry of Health to host vaccination drives to boost the rate of inoculation.

“The schools are meeting with parents and letting them know that they will go with the online mode as we have been doing right now, and so the exit examination cohort will actually come in on a rotational basis,” Pinnock said.

That rotational strategy is likely to be put into action by the 857 primary and high schools that have been identified as being compliant with the Ministry of Health’s COVID-19 safety and prevention regulations ahead of the new school term beginning on January 3.

CLASS RESTRICTIONS

However, administrators from two of those schools – Anchovy High School and Cornwall College in St James – have admitted that space constraints could pose challenges in the enforcing of COVID-19 guidelines, which include limited numbers of students inside the physical classrooms at any given time.

Anchovy High Principal Lavern Stewart told The Gleaner that while her school’s main campus in Anchovy recently had a new classroom built to accommodate more students, both of the school’s campuses need even more space to facilitate social distancing.

“Ideally, we need four more classrooms here on the main campus and six classrooms on the Fidel Castro campus (in Montpelier, St James). Based on our limitations, we have had to make a decision as administrators to have school return on a rotational basis. So the students will continue to learn online, and while some are at school, some will have to stay home and do some work online,” said Stewart.

Cornwall College headmaster Michael Ellis noted that although his school has seen half of the required 65 per cent of students being vaccinated, the risk of possible COVID-19 spread even among the inoculated population remains a concern.

“Up to this point, we are just about 35 per cent compliant where vaccination is concerned, and that is just among students, so we are halfway there. But if it is that even after you are vaccinated you can still contract the virus and pass it on to other people, I do not see how we could allow or accommodate all our approximately 1,400 students here because in some classes you have up to 50 students, and then we could not make reasonable allowance for social distancing,” said Ellis.

In the meantime, Pinnock was not able to tell The Gleaner how many schools in the Ministry of Education’s Region Four – which covers St James, Hanover, and Westmoreland – had provided vaccination records for their students.

“We do not have the number of students who would have been vaccinated to date as that data is fed to the Ministry of Health. Even though a school would have a vaccination blitz at their location, there are still some children taking their boosters or vaccinations at different places, so the school would not have an accurate running number of the total number of vaccinated students,” said Pinnock.

christopher.thomas@gleanerjm.com