Over 20,000 stu­dents, who will be writ­ing the 2020 Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate (CSEC) math­e­mat­ics ex­am­i­na­tions across Trinidad and To­ba­go, will be pro­vid­ed with free on­line math­e­mat­ics re­vi­sion through a part­ner­ship be­tween bmo­bile and lo­cal NGO, Re­store A Sense of I Can (RSC). 

The bmo­bile and RSC col­lab­o­ra­tion of­fers cost-free, ze­ro-da­ta ac­cess to the web­site, as well the host­ing of the plat­form, serv­er, videos and soft­ware.

Dr. Ronald Wal­cott, TSTT's Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, ex­plained that ze­ro-rat­ed da­ta ac­cess means that any CSEC stu­dent us­ing a bmo­bile da­ta plan will be able to log on to the math­e­mat­ics re­vi­sion plat­form for free. 

“Giv­en that there is no charge to use the math­e­mat­ics plat­form, whether a stu­dent has avail­able da­ta cred­it or not, is ir­rel­e­vant.  All stu­dents can now ac­cess this very high-lev­el math­e­mat­ics con­tent for free.”

He con­tin­ued: “Tech­nol­o­gy avail­abil­i­ty lev­els the play­ing field.  There are sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits to be de­rived from bring­ing tech­nol­o­gy and ed­u­ca­tion to­geth­er but the most im­por­tant of these is pro­vid­ing equal ac­cess re­gard­less of   so­cio-eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances.  To­day's tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ments per­mit achieve­ments with­out bor­ders or ge­og­ra­phy.  We are proud to be the tech­nol­o­gy part­ner for this crit­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion­al plat­form and will con­tin­ue to in­vest in our na­tion’s chil­dren.”

RSC di­rec­tor, Dharam­ra­jh Ram­dass, says he is very ex­cit­ed about the bmo­bile part­ner­ship, be­cause it would al­low them to reach a larg­er num­ber of stu­dents than ever be­fore. 

“We are very thank­ful for all the fund­ing and sup­port from bmo­bile.  The biggest win here for ed­u­ca­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go is the ze­ro-rat­ed da­ta of the project by bmo­bile.  This is crit­i­cal,” he ex­plains, “be­cause when you are deal­ing with the low­er so­cio-eco­nom­ic ar­eas, in­ter­net con­nec­tiv­i­ty and af­ford­abil­i­ty are of­ten huge is­sues.  How­ev­er, ze­ro-rat­ed da­ta will elim­i­nate all of these chal­lenges.  We now have a sit­u­a­tion where stu­dents do not need to have mon­ey on their da­ta plan to ac­cess our web­site and use the CSEC con­tent.  This means we will now be able to reach stu­dents that were pre­vi­ous­ly not pos­si­ble.”

Ram­dass ex­plained that the pro­gramme will fo­cus on the in­no­v­a­tive use of tech­nol­o­gy to reach the stu­dents na­tion­wide through live in­ter­ac­tive we­bi­nar train­ing; a peer sup­port fo­rum; on­line tu­to­ri­als; on­line mock ex­ams; and pre-record­ed an­i­mat­ed past pa­per so­lu­tions as videos. 

“Help­ing stu­dents who strug­gle is what we have been do­ing for a num­ber of years.  This year, the COVID-19 sit­u­a­tion has more or less ground­ed the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor to a halt,” he ob­serves.  “We have an es­ti­mat­ed 20,000 stu­dents in Trinidad and To­ba­go whose en­tire life may be thrown back by a year.  We are try­ing to help so that our stu­dents don’t lose a year of their life.  We are very grate­ful for bmo­bile’s sup­port.  They reached out at a time when the coun­try is in need.”

RSC is the of­fi­cial on­line ed­u­ca­tion part­ner for the Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of Prin­ci­pals of Sec­ondary Schools (CAPSS), of which the As­so­ci­a­tion of Prin­ci­pals of Sec­ondary Schools of Trinidad and To­ba­go (APPSSTT) is a mem­ber. 

RSC lists its goal as ‘Ef­fect­ing Change Through Tech­nol­o­gy and Ed­u­ca­tion’ and cur­rent­ly runs sev­er­al tech­nol­o­gy clubs and pro­grammes in lo­cal and re­gion­al sec­ondary schools. 

The on­line math­e­mat­ics re­vi­sion pro­gramme is sup­port­ed by APPSSTT which will help roll­out the plat­form across the schools na­tion­wide.  Vol­un­teer prin­ci­pals, teach­ers and fi­nal year UWI med­ical stu­dents, many of whom are na­tion­al schol­ar­ship win­ners, act as tu­tors, peer coun­sel­lors and con­tent de­vel­op­ers.  The peer-to-peer sup­port fo­rum brings the high­er per­form­ing stu­dents to­geth­er with the oth­er stu­dents, to pro­vide ad­di­tion­al sup­port to those who need it. 

Schools in­ter­est­ed in us­ing the on­line math­e­mat­ics re­vi­sion pro­gramme can call RSC at 474-3280 or 222-2168 or email ad­min@rscin­ter­na­tion­al.org.

The web­site will be launched next Tues­day, April 14th, 2020.

Fur­ther de­tails on the pro­gramme can be found on bmo­bile's Face­book page.