Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly is deny­ing that there are any is­sues with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s on­line learn­ing plat­forms.

Guardian Me­dia re­ceived nu­mer­ous com­plaints yes­ter­day, from teach­ers and par­ents, that on day two of the new school term, the web­site suf­fered sev­er­al crash­es through­out the day, in­ter­rupt­ing on­line teach­ing. Some par­ents/guardians al­so com­plained about sim­i­lar is­sues with on­line plat­forms be­ing used by some schools out­side of the min­istry’s fa­cil­i­ty to un­der­take the teach­ing process.

But in re­sponse to the claims about the min­istry’s plat­form, Gads­by-Dol­ly said the min­istry had not re­port­ed any crash­es. She said the is­sue may lie on the user’s end.

“How­ev­er, there have been the usu­al IT con­cerns which they con­tin­ue to ad­dress—in­abil­i­ty to log on, pass­word changes etc. Some is­sues re­side at the user’s end, so I can­not ver­i­fy the crash­es,” Gads­by-Dol­ly wrote in re­sponse to ques­tions sent via What­sApp.

On Mon­day, Gads­by-Dol­ly said 70 per cent of pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools were card­ed to be­gin teach­ing. How­ev­er, she could not say how many of that per­cent­age had ful­filled their man­date.

Asked about a pro­pos­al by some par­ents to have face-to-face class­es for on­ly those stu­dents who have no on­line ac­cess, Gads­by-Dol­ly said face-to-face ses­sions are not en­cour­aged dur­ing the on­go­ing COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“It is for this ex­act rea­son that chil­dren were to be kept home—to re­duce con­gre­ga­tion and the spread of COVID.”

How­ev­er, Gads­by-Dol­ly said the num­ber of stu­dents who have no in­ter­net ac­cess and/or de­vices to ac­cess on­line class­es has been re­duced, since par­ents pur­chased de­vices them­selves in some cas­es.

At a press con­fer­ence sev­er­al weeks ago, Gads­by-Dol­ly said about 65,000 stu­dents were with­out de­vices to ac­cess e-learn­ing.

Yes­ter­day, she said in­for­ma­tion would be gath­ered at the end of Sep­tem­ber to de­ter­mine how many stu­dents are still in need.

Gads­by-Dol­ly said in the in­ter­im, the do­na­tions of de­vices from cor­po­rate T&T are pour­ing in.

“Over 25 cor­po­rate donors have come for­ward. The is­sue is sup­ply—so the lev­el of do­na­tions are still be­ing fi­nalised as the abil­i­ty to pur­chase de­vices is cir­cum­scribed by what will be­come avail­able in the next 14 days. The in­tend­ed do­na­tions are of var­i­ous quan­ti­ties—some in the thou­sands, some un­der 100.”

She said one donor has placed an or­der for 10,000 de­vices and promised that by next week a tal­ly of do­nat­ed de­vices would be an­nounced.

Mean­while, Na­tion­al Pri­ma­ry Schools Prin­ci­pals’ As­so­ci­a­tion (NAPSPA) pres­i­dent Lance Mot­t­ley said teach­ers will al­so re­quire some ad­di­tion­al train­ing as they nav­i­gate the vir­tu­al class­room, giv­en some of the chal­lenges which will arise for them dur­ing this term.

“This is not a per­fect en­vi­ron­ment, when the pan­dem­ic came we all were thrust, so to speak, in­to this new learn­ing en­vi­ron­ment so we are all learn­ing, the prin­ci­pals, the teach­ers, the stu­dents, we are all learn­ing to ad­just to the new nor­mal and it’s go­ing to be a learn­ing curb,” Mot­t­ley told Guardian Me­dia.

He said while there was some lev­el of pre-plan­ning there were still hur­dles con­cern­ing stu­dents who lack in­ter­net con­nec­tiv­i­ty.

“There is the op­tion of the print­ed pack­ages which we are tak­ing full ad­van­tage of, they are the stu­dents that teach­ers will put to­geth­er pack­ages to leave them at the school, par­ents will come and col­lect them and these pack­ages are sup­posed to con­tain ma­te­r­i­al that will last the stu­dents through­out, per­haps maybe about a week, so that we don’t need to have teach­ers track­ing back and forth. This could be per­haps maybe a once a week sce­nario, maybe twice per week,” said Mot­t­ley, who ad­mit­ted even this ap­proach re­quired a lev­el of guid­ance.

“If we do not have the face to face in­ter­ac­tion, where we can be able to mon­i­tor the nu­ances of our stu­dents, the faces, their ex­pres­sions et cetera, if we are not able to do that prop­er­ly, of course many things are go­ing to be lost. So that again, once again it is not a per­fect en­vi­ron­ment but it is one that we need to utilise at this par­tic­u­lar point in time, it is avail­able to us,” he said.

He added, “Print­ed ma­te­ri­als, we need to have train­ing in the area of us­ing print­ed ma­te­r­i­al to teach. Print­ed ma­te­ri­als is not just about pho­to­copies and giv­ing a child to do some kind of work, it must fol­low some strict ped­a­gog­i­cal sound prin­ci­ples and you’re right, would that be able to be com­mu­ni­cat­ed us­ing print­ed ma­te­ri­als in the way it should? It can hap­pen but our teach­ers have to be trained in that area.”

Mot­t­ley said some of these con­cerns and the call for train­ing had been ex­pressed in meet­ings with the min­is­ter.