In or­der to en­sure that valu­able teach­ing and learn­ing time is not lost dur­ing this pe­ri­od as the na­tion bat­tles to stem the spread of COVID-19, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion is al­ready putting things in place to reach the na­tion’s chil­dren via sev­er­al medi­ums in­clud­ing tele­vi­sion and on­line learn­ing.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the min­istry is al­ready record­ing teach­ing ses­sions in sub­ject ar­eas such as Math­e­mat­ics, Sci­ence and Eng­lish Lan­guage to be broad­cast on state-owned TTT dai­ly.

While it is un­clear when the seg­ments will be broad­cast, of­fi­cials said it is was be­ing done to en­sure stu­dents are con­struc­tive­ly oc­cu­pied while at home dur­ing this pe­ri­od away from school.

The min­istry’s ini­tia­tive fol­lows a sim­i­lar move by Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed (GML) who has since part­nered with el­e­vate-ED Tu­tor­ing Ser­vices to of­fer dai­ly ses­sions in Math­e­mat­ics, Eng­lish Lan­guage and Cre­ative Writ­ing.

On Tues­day, Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) Pres­i­dent An­to­nia Tekah-De Fre­itas called on the cor­po­rate sec­tor to sup­port gov­ern­ment's ini­tia­tives to en­sure stu­dents did not lose pre­cious aca­d­e­m­ic time be­cause of the iso­la­tion en­force­ment.

Re­gard­ing the fact that some stu­dents do not have ac­cess to elec­tron­ic de­vices to fa­cil­i­tate on­line learn­ing, Tekah-De Fre­itas urged rel­e­vant busi­ness­es to step up now.

She said, "We want them to con­sid­er per­haps, the shar­ing of lap­tops with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion so that stu­dents who don't have, can go to a li­brary or an­oth­er pub­lic space in small groups or even re­ceive their own, so they can ac­cess on­line plat­forms."

In ad­di­tion, she re­quest­ed providers to en­sure Wifi hotspots are avail­able to im­prove con­nec­tiv­i­ty in some ar­eas so stu­dents can ac­cess the links and on­line ses­sions be­ing made avail­able to them.

She re­it­er­at­ed, "Teach­ers are reach­ing out to stu­dents and par­ents, we have not dropped every­thing and just fold­ed our arms and sat back."

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, she said teach­ers across the coun­try were still at work - in­ter­fac­ing with stu­dents on dig­i­tal plat­forms, prepar­ing and shar­ing re­vi­sion ma­te­r­i­al. In ad­di­tion, she said teach­ers were al­so shar­ing learn­ing re­sources.

Im­me­di­ate past pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA), Raf­fiena Ali-Boodoos­ingh re­ferred to the tech­no­log­i­cal chal­lenges faced by some stu­dents and urged the au­thor­i­ties to con­sid­er a so­lu­tion to en­sure all stu­dents have ac­cess to the on­line learn­ing.