T&T's ar­cha­ic Ed­u­ca­tion Act of 1966 could be one of the rea­sons why Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cials are now seek­ing ad­vice from the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al on how teach­ers can be made to ac­count for their work while at home dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Six weeks af­ter schools across the coun­try were closed as a re­sult of COVID-19, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) con­tin­ue to wran­gle about the way for­ward on the is­sue of home­school­ing the more than 200,000 chil­dren through­out the coun­try via on­line meth­ods.

And there is noth­ing in the act that can com­pel teach­ers to teach stu­dents, par­tic­u­lar­ly in an on­line set­ting. It al­so does not ad­dress teach­ers at the Ear­ly Child­hood Care and Ed­u­ca­tion cen­tres, ter­tiary lev­el, or any sit­u­a­tion dur­ing the pe­ri­od of a pan­dem­ic.

While TTUTA and the min­istry con­tin­ue this dis­cus­sion, the stu­dent pop­u­la­tion has been left to suf­fer, par­tic­u­lar­ly the 60,000 stu­dents who re­main with­out tech­no­log­i­cal de­vices to en­able them to e-learn­ing plat­forms and those who were set to do ei­ther the SEA and CSEC ex­ams which were post­poned due to the COVID mea­sures.

Dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing last month, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Lovell Fran­cis said some 60,000 stu­dents were with­out any de­vices to ac­cess e-learn­ing plat­forms. The sit­u­a­tion re­mains the same some six weeks lat­er. This in­abil­i­ty to prop­er­ly tran­si­tion to re­mote learn­ing has now raised is­sues re­lat­ed to ac­cess and eq­ui­ty.

Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion chair­man Dr Fazal Ali, who is al­so a Guardian Me­dia colum­nist, said the im­me­di­ate lo­gis­ti­cal chal­lenge is to guar­an­tee that all stu­dents have the tools and tech­nol­o­gy they need to learn re­mote­ly.

The min­istry con­tin­ues to come un­der heavy fire from par­ents and ed­u­ca­tion stake­hold­ers for its per­ceived lack of ac­tion in pro­vid­ing these chil­dren--and even some teach­ers--with the nec­es­sary tech­no­log­i­cal tools to ac­cess the e-learn­ing plat­forms and con­tin­ue with ed­u­cat­ing their charges.

In an un­ex­pect­ed move on Fri­day, how­ev­er, TTUTA gen­er­al sec­re­tary Kady Beck­les ad­vised mem­bers not to sign off on any con­tract or ac­cept lap­tops be­fore TTUTA has fur­ther dis­cus­sions with the min­istry.

The ad­vice was is­sued via re­lease late Fri­day and came hours af­ter TTUTA pres­i­dent An­to­nia Tekah-De Fre­itas told Guardian Me­dia the union had an un­der­stand­ing of the min­istry's ef­forts to reach teach­ers and stu­dents dur­ing the COVID-19 lock­down mea­sures.

The sud­den­ness of the present dis­rup­tion in school­ing has cer­tain­ly ex­posed the short­com­ings and how un­pre­pared the coun­try is for dig­i­tal school­ing in par­tic­u­lar.

Both the min­istry and TTUTA have been caught with their pants down.

The chal­lenges have arisen be­cause the new in­fra­struc­ture is soft.

"It is dig­i­tal not con­crete," said Ali, who added that "chil­dren are dig­i­tal na­tives but many adults re­main dig­i­tal mi­grants."

The forced and abrupt shift to re­mote learn­ing has not been with­out dis­rup­tion and dis­trac­tion every­where, Ali ob­served.

"Stu­dents are now ex­pect­ed to ad­just and to learn as much as they did in a pre-COVID-19 world with­out the vi­bran­cy of school life, cafe­te­ria con­ver­sa­tions, in­ter­ac­tions at lunchtime and those serendip­i­tous mo­ments of en­gage­ment ripe with last­ing so­cial con­nec­tions in cor­ri­dors. The rich bus­tle and ex­cite­ment of an in-per­son learn­ing en­vi­ron­ment is no more," he said.

But as the chal­lenge con­tin­ues, Ali said, "Some in­sti­tu­tions have man­aged the shift in an ar­che­typ­al man­ner; oth­ers are mov­ing with con­fi­dence to­wards suc­cess. All, how­ev­er, have more dis­tance to cov­er to achieve the bril­liance that de­lin­eates the ex­pe­ri­ence of re­mote learn­ing."

For schools to suc­ceed in the new COVID-19 vir­tu­al world, Ali said they must iden­ti­fy the tech-savvy stu­dents and staff to coach staff and oth­er stu­dents.

"Pi­lot­ing new ap­proach­es and build­ing on proven prac­tices builds pos­i­tive and en­dur­ing change. The build­ing of mas­sive open on­line con­tent plat­forms (MOOCs) aimed at un­lim­it­ed par­tic­i­pa­tion and open ac­cess like edX and Cours­era, and Apps like Class­Do­jo, have tak­en many learn­ing com­mu­ni­ties far ahead of the curve," Ali said.

"Nu­mer­ous in­ter­net and tele­phone ser­vice providers have signed the FCC Keep Amer­i­cans Con­nect­ed Pledge and are pro­vid­ing ben­e­fits like free hot spots with no da­ta caps to sup­port re­mote learn­ing. Bridg­ing the Dig­i­tal-Di­vide is a pri­or­i­ty of the new in­fra­struc­ture. In­for­ma­tion high­ways are need­ed more than ever. And they must be pa­trolled."

Weigh­ing in on the is­sue, for­mer chief ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cer Ken­rick Seep­er­sad said while it was too harsh to say the min­istry had failed, “there is a great con­cern be­cause you have to look at it from the point of view of the chil­dren who need cer­tain­ty.”

De­scrib­ing the sit­u­a­tion as flu­id, he said there needs to be a lit­tle more risk and dis­tinc­tive lead­er­ship.

Gar­cia: We are do­ing our best

De­spite fac­ing a bar­rage of blows from crit­ics on so­cial me­dia for "fail­ing the na­tion's chil­dren," Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia has re­mained adamant he has been try­ing his best dur­ing this cri­sis. He said the at­tacks against him were mere UNC pro­pa­gan­da.

On Fri­day, Gar­cia said he would not re­spond to any­thing that ap­pears on so­cial me­dia.

“We are do­ing our work and we are con­fi­dent what we are do­ing will re­dound to the ben­e­fit of our stu­dents in par­tic­u­lar,” Gar­cia said.

Asked to re­spond to crit­i­cisms that the min­istry had failed teach­ers and stu­dents by mov­ing too slow­ly to en­sure e-learn­ing took place out­side the class­room dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, Gar­cia main­tained they act­ed swift­ly to mit­i­gate the ef­fects aris­ing out of the clo­sure of schools. He said dis­cus­sions are con­tin­u­ing with the rel­e­vant agen­cies on how the sit­u­a­tion in­volv­ing the 60,000 stu­dents can be ad­dressed with­out fur­ther de­lays.

“We are ad­dress­ing that sit­u­a­tion and we are con­fi­dent that a res­o­lu­tion to the prob­lem will be made. We are do­ing every­thing pos­si­ble to en­sure that every­body will have ac­cess…we are work­ing on that,” Gar­cia said.

“In ar­eas where there is no in­ter­net ac­cess, dis­cus­sions are on­go­ing with the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT). We have ar­tic­u­lat­ed our po­si­tion and I have no fur­ther com­ment to make on that."

How­ev­er, Gar­cia was un­able to pro­vide a time line for a res­o­lu­tion to the mat­ter. Asked if his min­istry had re­ceived any of the emer­gency fund­ing al­lo­cat­ed by Gov­ern­ment to ready the na­tion for the COVID-19 fight, Gar­cia said, “That con­ver­sa­tion again…I will not take part in be­cause it is premised on un­truths. There is no $20 bil­lion we have put out for that, that is UNC pro­pa­gan­da. I will not com­ment on that.”

In 2017, there were 455 pri­ma­ry and 125 sec­ondary schools in T&T with a com­bined stu­dent pop­u­la­tion of 200,000.

Na­tion­al Pri­ma­ry Schools Prin­ci­pals’ head com­mends min­istry

Mean­while, Na­tion­al Pri­ma­ry Schools Prin­ci­pals’ As­so­ci­a­tion (NAPSPA) pres­i­dent Lance Mot­t­ley has en­dorsed the min­istry’s ac­cel­er­at­ed ef­forts to de­vel­op on­line plat­forms to move the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem in­to the 21st cen­tu­ry.

Say­ing all school prin­ci­pals were ex­posed to the Ed­u­ca­tion Man­age­ment In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem (EMIS) plat­form when it was launched late last year, he said, “Be­fore COVID-19, we would have seen text­books on­line and al­so, the on­line en­gage­ment of stu­dents.

“Par­ents, teach­ers and stu­dents were al­so en­cour­aged to go on­line and pop­u­late the site with ma­te­r­i­al, so what COVID-19 would have done is ac­cel­er­at­ed the process so we are now see­ing the School Learn­ing Man­age­ment Sys­tem (SLMS) come on stream.”

Mot­t­ley com­mend­ed the min­istry for their ef­forts, even as he ad­mit­ted, “The en­tire coun­try is not wired for in­ter­net and the eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances of many of our par­ents do not al­low them to have the lux­u­ry of hav­ing de­vices such as lap­tops and tablets for every sin­gle mem­ber of the house­hold.

“And giv­en the cur­rent pe­ri­od we are in, where peo­ple are los­ing their jobs, I do not think that ed­u­ca­tion might be a pri­or­i­ty for many of our par­ents who can­not af­ford ba­sic items such as food and shel­ter.”

NPTA: Min­istry failed par­ents, stu­dents, teach­ers

Ac­cus­ing the min­istry of fail­ing the coun­try, in­clud­ing teach­ers, stu­dents and par­ents, dur­ing this dif­fi­cult and frus­trat­ing time, Na­tion­al Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) act­ing pres­i­dent Clarence Men­doza said, “There are no proac­tive mea­sures be­ing tak­en by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, they are now just re­act­ing.

“The MOE has failed the coun­try, and par­ents and stu­dents by ex­ten­sion. And they have con­tin­ued to fail teach­ers who are al­so par­ents.”

TTUTA agrees to work-from-home pol­i­cy

TTUTA pres­i­dent An­to­nia Tekah-De Fre­itas be­lieves the min­istry has so far ad­dressed the sit­u­a­tion ac­cord­ing to the re­sources avail­able to them.

She said Gar­cia had con­firmed ap­proach­ing cor­po­rate T&T for as­sis­tance in procur­ing de­vices and ex­pand­ing and im­prov­ing in­ter­net ac­cess across the coun­try.

“As teach­ers, we may have to con­sid­er lend­ing ad­di­tion­al sup­port and mak­ing our own over­tures but I think the min­istry is try­ing as best as it can with­in the time frame they have to work with,” Tekah-De Fre­itas said.

Three days af­ter agree­ing to a work-from-home pol­i­cy for teach­ers, Tekah-De Fre­itas said they were yet to pro­vide the min­istry with an of­fi­cial doc­u­ment out­lin­ing their con­di­tions.

Not­ing the short pe­ri­od TTUTA had to gath­er da­ta on how many teach­ers and stu­dents were cur­rent­ly with­out lap­tops, she said, “We are con­cerned about the short time frame giv­en to us ful­fill that re­quest and it is putting quite a bit of pres­sure on teach­ers, who now have to use their re­sources to con­tact par­ents to get in­for­ma­tion for each child.”

Tekah-De Fre­itas said they had since reached out to the min­istry for an ex­ten­sion of the May 4 dead­line for teach­ers and May 5 for stu­dents.

Fol­low­ing its agree­ment to the work-from-home pol­i­cy, she said their next con­cern was how re­struc­tur­ing of the term will be done when­ev­er schools are re­opened.

De­ci­sive ac­tion need­ed: Ex-chi­eff ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cer

Weigh­ing in on the is­sue, for­mer chief ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cer Ken­rick Seep­er­sad said la­belling the min­istry’s ac­tions thus far as a fail­ure was a bit harsh. In­stead, he said, “There is a great con­cern be­cause you have to look at it from the point of view of the chil­dren who need cer­tain­ty.”

Seep­er­sad said while sec­ondary stu­dents were hap­py to have the ex­tra time, – since their ex­ams will not be ad­min­is­tered be­fore June/Ju­ly--it was cru­cial that pri­ma­ry school stu­dents writ­ing the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) re­turn to school by mid-June, with the ex­am be­ing ad­min­is­tered by the first week in Ju­ly.

He said if the SEA ex­ams are not ad­min­is­tered be­fore Sep­tem­ber it will neg­a­tive­ly im­pact the rest of the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem and set all stu­dents back and “every­thing is go­ing to be top­sy-turvy in Sep­tem­ber.”

“Re­mem­ber, there are chil­dren who need to be­gin pri­ma­ry school and there are many schools who will not be able to take them be­cause they would not have space for them,” Seep­er­sad said.

“There is need for some kind of plan­ning and di­rec­tion now, with de­ci­sive ac­tion need­ed.”

Seep­er­sad said the un­cer­tain­ty COVID-19 brings has the po­ten­tial to de­rail the Ear­ly Child­hood Care and Ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem and neg­a­tive­ly ham­per the smooth tran­si­tion of stu­dents in­to pri­ma­ry school.

Gopeesingh: Lap­top pro­gramme sus­pen­sion was retro-re­gres­sive

For­mer ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh mean­while blast­ed the Gov­ern­ment for its poor han­dling of the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

He claimed the min­istry had tak­en a “retro-re­gres­sive” step by sus­pend­ing the lap­top pro­gramme in schools af­ter as­sum­ing of­fice in 2015, as teach­ers and stu­dents had been ini­ti­at­ed in­to ICT in sec­ondary schools.

For­mer ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter Fazal Karim. mean­while. said the min­istry had aban­doned and ne­glect­ed ter­tiary and vo­ca­tion­al stu­dents.

He said since March, the coun­try's ed­u­ca­tion­al sys­tem had come to a grind­ing halt while ex­am­i­na­tion stu­dents had been left wor­ried and schol­ar­ship hope­fuls paral­ysed.

“Young peo­ple have re­duced chances of get­ting jobs and open­ing busi­ness­es giv­en the COVID-19 cri­sis. This is in­deed a wor­ry­ing con­cern," Karim said.

When the Sun­day Guardian con­tact­ed UWI St Au­gus­tine's School of Ed­u­ca­tion, Prof Jerome De Lisle said, "The sit­u­a­tion of ed­u­ca­tion amidst COVID-19 is a very flu­id one and is cur­rent­ly be­ing mon­i­tored."

BOX

Ques­tions to Gar­cia

Guardian Me­dia di­rect­ed these ques­tions, among oth­ers, to Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia in a tele­phone in­ter­view. How­ev­er, Gar­cia opt­ed not to re­spond to many of them.

Have CAPE and CSEC ex­ams been can­celled?

That mat­ter is still un­der dis­cus­sion and CXC is a re­gion­al ex­am and, there­fore, we have to have dis­cus­sions with the re­gion­al Min­is­ters of Ed­u­ca­tion be­fore we come to any de­ci­sion. The po­si­tion of the Gov­ern­ment of T&T is not to can­cel the ex­ams. Our prob­lem is to resched­ule the ex­am based on the ad­vice we re­ceive from the Min­istry of Health, as they are di­rect­ing us as we move for­ward con­cern­ing ex­ams.

What will hap­pen to those stu­dents who have al­ready un­der­gone as­sess­ment?

In terms of CAPE and CSEC, most of the schools have com­plet­ed their syl­labus, ex­cept that the SBAs have not yet been fi­nalised in terms of giv­ing a grade that will be sent to CXC.

What will hap­pen to those stu­dents from dis­ad­van­taged back­grounds who are more like­ly to have their grades un­der-pre­dict­ed?

All these ques­tions are the sub­ject of dis­cus­sions and the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion is do­ing every­thing we can so that our stu­dents will not be left be­hind.”

Af­ter de­clin­ing to an­swer any fur­ther ques­tions, Gar­cia said, “The po­si­tion of the Gov­ern­ment has been ar­tic­u­lat­ed to CXC in writ­ing. I made a state­ment in Par­lia­ment on Wednes­day, that is, our pref­er­ence is for us to have the ex­ams in June/Ju­ly based on the ad­vice of the Min­istry of Health.

“The ex­am should in­clude Pa­per 1 which is mul­ti­ple choice, Pa­per 2 which is the es­say-type ques­tions, and al­so the SBA as­sess­ment. Those are the three things that Cab­i­net has agreed up­on and there’s noth­ing more I can say on it."