‘Students will bounce back’ - Education Minister Fayval Williams confident of a turnaround, emphasises the need to close digital divide

Despite the threat of a major educational crisis at the primary level because of the setback caused by COVID-19 pandemic, Education Minister Fayval Williams remains confident that students will bounce back in reasonable time and begin to perform satisfactorily.

Key to this, she said, is closing the digital divide that exists among students, failing which the situation would only deteriorate further.

She was speaking at the launch the Sandals Foundation initiative to hand over 1,400 tablets to 40 primary schools. Williams said: “Many, many persons have recognised that there is a digital divide in Jamaica. If we allow that to continue that way, in time you can see that a majority of our students will be left totally behind. We cannot stand by and allow that to happen, so that’s why we’re taking these steps to ensure that we begin to close that divide. And it begins this way, with the distribution of tablets.”

She said issues surrounding Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate and Primary Exit Profile PEP examinations, which are due to begin in the first quarter of next year, will be addressed shortly.

Face-to-face classes were suspended in March as the Government sought to minimise the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite this, 672 school-age children have been tested positive.

The Ministry of Education, in a submission made to the Public Administration and Appropriations Committee (PAAC) last Thursday, revealed that diagnostic tests to evaluate students’ learning levels showed serious gaps. These were across all subject areas, including the understanding of the critical concepts. The parliamentarians at the PAAC concluded that this is a forerunner to a major crisis in education.

When pressed by The Gleaner to address the findings, Williams said she was optimistic, adding that more aggressive intervention is now being planned.

“We’ve ensured that we were able to offer different approaches to our students to help them to engage with the education system, but nevertheless, we all knew that if, over a long period of time, if you’re not engaged actively, you’re going to lose some learning,” she said.

But she said the first thing was to quantify the extent of the learning loss to establish a benchmark of how widespread the situation is.

INTERVENTION

“The next step is the intervention to help to close that gap over the next school term. We’re in the stage now where we are planning more aggressive intervention for our students, to help them to recover the learning loss that would have occurred,” Williams said.

She said additional persons from within the education sector have already been employed to provide support as Jamaica tries to weather out the pandemic.

She was unable to indicate a timeline when the situation would start improving, but said the Government remains committed to the cause.

“In the meantime, we’re not throwing down our hands, we’re not giving up, we have to still try to use all the platforms that we have to keep our students engaged with the education sector,” she said.

Principal of Ocho Rios Primary School Suzette Barnes-Wilson said the gap in learning, as highlighted at the PAAC, can be remedied with support from the private sector and from communities.

“What we want to do is to get the community to huddle together in order to help more students, because those who might not be able to reach school or not having Internet access, it could be that a church within the community could facilitate that,” Barnes-Wilson told The Gleaner.

She added that students could also use libraries that have internet access and have HEART students supervise them where necessary.

Barnes-Wilson said a concerted effort, which would see everyone rallying around the education sector, would not only close the gap, but could do so by the end of this academic year, with or without COVID.

“It can happen, but we need everybody. If we can improve where the shortfalls are, especially credit access and Internet activity, I’m really confident that it’s possible,” she said.