rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt
The shift to online and remote classes in 2020 was not easy for many pupils, students and schools.
But for the Lendore Village Hindu Primary School, it was especially challenging.
Located in the underprivileged community of Enterprise—infamously synonymous with crime—the school’s serves some 340 pupils from the area.
Many of them belong to low socio-economic families who found it challenging to make ends meet even before the pandemic reached the country.
It’s why almost two-thirds of the pupils were disconnected during the transition.
“They (pupils) didn’t have computers in their homes. They didn’t have tablets, they didn’t have internet so the transition would have been much more difficult than homes that already had existing computers and devices and internet,” the school’s principal Roger Rosan told Guardian Media.
“We take it for granted that we would have had those things before—in all homes—and it was just to log on to class but when we started off (online learning) here only about between 35 to 40 per cent of the students were accessing live classes.”
This figure was only so high according to the head of a department, Renuka Ramsingh because pupils without devices would often visit those who had in order to attend classes.
Another challenge was teachers themselves did not have devices or were hesitant to use personal devices for work. Some also weren’t “tech-savvy.”
However, the principal was able to train the teachers in the use of technology to help them educate their pupils.
Through device donations from the Ministry of Education and the school’s board the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha (SDMS), Rosan said pupils’ attendance was brought up to 96 per cent.
The ministry donated some 100 laptops and 39 tablets to students and the SDMS would have donated at least 20 tablets. He noted other parents sacrificed and purchased devices for their children.
Now that Standard Five pupils have returned to the classroom and the rest of the school is scheduled to come out in the near future, Rosan said the school will not be abandoning the progress made with incorporating technology into education.
“We are not going to...revert back to where we were but we are going to incorporate more of the beneficial side to the online. We will be encouraging more online testing, we sending homework.”
Ramsingh noted that one of the advantages of online classes is that parents were forced to become involved in their children’s education.
“You find there was almost a forced input from parents because they were forced to assist their children. They also learnt (the technology) too,” she said.
