Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly says scal­ing up dig­i­tal learn­ing will be crit­i­cal in bridg­ing the gap and ac­cel­er­at­ing ed­u­ca­tion goals.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view on TTT’s In Depth pro­gramme on Mon­day evening, Dr Gads­by-Dol­ly ex­plained how the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic ex­posed dig­i­tal in­equal­i­ties which have been lan­guish­ing for years. She said that a blue­print was need­ed now to chart the coun­try’s fu­ture in ed­u­ca­tion with dig­i­tal learn­ing at its core.

“We are in 2021 and it re­al­ly took the pan­dem­ic and it took that pe­ri­od of hav­ing to move to dig­i­tal that al­lowed us to make strides that we would not have tak­en I think in the next 20 to 30 years. There­fore dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and cash­ing in and hold­ing on to the gains we made now is a main area of fo­cus.”

On Mon­day the new aca­d­e­m­ic school year opened with on­line learn­ing. The last time the en­tire school pop­u­la­tion from pre-school to sec­ondary lev­el at­tend­ed face-to-face class­es oc­curred be­fore March 2020. Since then on­ly pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school stu­dents prepar­ing for var­i­ous ex­am­i­na­tions were al­lowed to at­tend phys­i­cal class­es.

Ac­cord­ing to the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter, a re­cent meet­ing with stake­hold­ers fo­cused on the learn­ing man­age­ment sys­tem and the fu­ture role of dig­i­tal learn­ing giv­en the spring­board pro­vid­ed by the ed­u­ca­tion emer­gency caused by the pan­dem­ic.

“Al­though our teach­ers, stu­dents and par­ents would have done very well so far with on­line learn­ing, the gold stan­dard for on­line learn­ing is a learn­ing man­age­ment sys­tem where you have teach­ers with their own e-class­rooms and all the work is laid out and pre­pared, they can do quizzes with their stu­dents, e-test­ing in a more whole­some and pro­duc­tive way.”

Min­is­ter Gads­by-Dol­ly said the re­cent staffing of the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry’s Ed­u­ca­tion Tech­nol­o­gy Unit will bol­ster ef­forts to achieve the aim of en­sur­ing a more in­clu­sive and sus­tain­able ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.

“This unit did not ex­ist be­fore and we are now staffing and that is im­por­tant be­cause to move to on­line learn­ing in this or­gan­ised way you have to have staff ded­i­cat­ed to that, so it’s a dig­i­tal eco-sys­tem that is be­ing built.”

The min­is­ter said it was now time to in­vest heav­i­ly in aug­ment­ing the dig­i­tal as­pect of the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem so as to mit­i­gate fu­ture fall­out which could have a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on the so­cio-eco­nom­ic wel­fare of the coun­try.