If you ap­plied for a de­vice for your child and have not re­ceived it, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly says don’t wor­ry. An ad­di­tion­al 2,000 de­vices will be dis­trib­uted to needy stu­dents this week.

Days be­fore the start of the new school term, Gads­by-Dol­ly said a fur­ther 2,500 ap­pli­ca­tions will be processed while the 2,000 de­vices are dis­trib­uted. She said the Min­istry has tak­en de­liv­ery of 20,000 de­vices. 

“Of this, 11,800 have been dis­trib­uted to stu­dents thus far, with a fur­ther 2,000 to be de­liv­ered dur­ing this week. This is af­ter the do­na­tion of 22,000 de­vices through the Adopt-a-School Ini­tia­tive.”

The re­cip­i­ents of these de­vices were cho­sen af­ter a means test was done in schools.

“Of the 23,000 ap­pli­cants, over 6,628 did not sub­mit the rel­e­vant doc­u­men­ta­tion, and their means test ap­pli­ca­tions could not, there­fore, be processed,” the Min­is­ter said.

She not­ed that 2,500 ap­pli­ca­tions are yet to be processed and this should be com­plet­ed while the dis­tri­b­u­tion of 2,500 de­vices con­tin­ues this week. Mi­Fi de­vices have been pro­cured through iGovTT.

“De­liv­ery is an­tic­i­pat­ed at the end of Au­gust or ear­ly Sep­tem­ber for dis­tri­b­u­tion to those iden­ti­fied as need­ing as­sis­tance in this re­gard from the means test,” she said.

And as the schools re­open, the con­tin­u­ing as­sess­ment will be done to en­sure that no child is left be­hind, the Min­is­ter added.

“Da­ta will be col­lect­ed from prin­ci­pals about stu­dents who fail to en­gage in on­line class­es ear­ly in the up­com­ing term, and where ac­cess to a de­vice or con­nec­tiv­i­ty is the is­sue, ef­forts will be made to bridge the gap,” Gads­by-Dol­ly said.

Sev­er­al schools have con­tin­ued as­sist­ing stu­dents. At the Shi­va Boys Hin­du Col­lege (SB­HC), vice-prin­ci­pal Devi­nesh Neer­an­jan said sta­tionery, in­clud­ing note­books, pens and oth­er items, are be­ing shared with needy stu­dents. 

SB­HC’s En­vi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence teacher Jaime Bir­bal has been as­sist­ing dozens of par­ents from across the coun­try with sup­plies at both the pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school lev­els. Her stu­dents from the school’s In­ter­act Club has been col­lect­ing used school books and dis­trib­ut­ing them to needy fam­i­lies.

All stu­dents are ex­pect­ed to re­turn to school vir­tu­al­ly next Mon­day. From Oc­to­ber 1, on­ly ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed stu­dents in Forms Four, Five and Six will have the op­tion to at­tend face-to-face class­es at schools once there is no sig­nif­i­cant change in the num­ber of COVID-19 pos­i­tive cas­es.

Al­though vac­ci­na­tions are not manda­to­ry at this time, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley hint­ed that this could change.

At a re­cent press con­fer­ence, he said: “If at the end of the pe­ri­od we have set, which is mid-Sep­tem­ber, we look back on it and we see on­ly a pop­u­la­tion of vac­ci­nat­ed pupils which is well be­low the herd im­mu­ni­ty lev­el of 60 or 70 per cent, then the gov­ern­ment will have to act.”

Re­sults for the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment ex­ams are ex­pect­ed to be out by mid-Sep­tem­ber. 

Mean­while, book­stores re­mained busier than usu­al on Mon­day. Di­rec­tor at Kei­th Khan’s Books Etc at Mon Re­pos, Khalied Khan, said they have been do­ing their part to as­sist the un­der­priv­i­leged. 

“We have part­nered with a few foun­da­tions and giv­en book grants and dis­counts to de­serv­ing fam­i­lies,” Khan said.

He ex­plained that dur­ing the hol­i­day, book or­ders were tak­en and a pick­up and drop arrange­ment worked well.

“I have no in­ten­tion of stop­ping this. It will go on. To­day we have seen many more walk-in cus­tomers,” he said.

↔—RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA