Jesse Ramdeo

Stu­dents and teach­ers at Fa­ti­ma Col­lege in Port-of-Spain con­tin­ue to cope in the face of un­prece­dent­ed changes to how ed­u­ca­tion is ad­min­is­tered as a re­sult of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

With on­go­ing re­ports of stu­dents, teach­ers and par­ents be­ing over­whelmed, anx­ious and stressed by on­line learn­ing and re­duced phys­i­cal in­ter­ac­tion, Prin­ci­pal of the Ro­man Catholic boys’ sec­ondary school, Fa­ther Gre­go­ry Au­gus­tine said fre­quent ex­am­i­na­tions paint a dif­fer­ent pic­ture which sug­gests all par­ties may have found the se­cret to suc­cess.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew, Fa­ther Gre­go­ry said both stu­dents and teach­ers were able to quick­ly iron out the kinks caused by the pan­dem­ic, he said he was es­pe­cial­ly grate­ful that no mem­ber of the stu­dent pop­u­la­tion was with­out ac­cess to con­nec­tion de­vices.

“We had a full term from April to Ju­ly last term and any­one who was in need of any de­vices that was sort­ed out, so I have to say we have had a one hun­dred per cent on­line fol­low­ing.”

A se­ries of fea­tures by Guardian Me­dia lim­it­ed en­ti­tled “No child left be­hind”, has shed light on the dif­fi­cul­ties and is­sues stu­dents and par­ents face from not hav­ing ac­cess to the in­ter­net to not hav­ing con­nec­tiv­i­ty de­vices.

Fa­ther Gre­go­ry ac­knowl­edged that while stu­dents at Fa­ti­ma Col­lege may not be faced with some of the so­cio-eco­nom­ic chal­lenges oth­ers stu­dents en­dure, they are grate­ful and make the most of their sit­u­a­tion. “There are learn­ing lim­i­ta­tions and the so­cial part must not be dis­count­ed, but cer­tain­ly giv­en the present sit­u­a­tion, I have to say we are pleased with what we have achieved so far. We aware that stu­dents come from well off homes so we know we are at an ad­van­tage but this is not to say what oth­ers are say­ing or ex­pe­ri­enc­ing is not true.”

Mean­while, Fa­ther Gre­go­ry called from more trans­paren­cy from the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tion Coun­cil as it per­tains to how CAPE and CSEC sub­jects were grad­ed giv­en the re­gion­al dis­sat­is­fac­tion ex­pressed.

“I think this ex­pe­ri­ence is go­ing to teach CXC that they have to be a lot more open to com­mu­ni­ca­tion, to crit­i­cisms and ad­vice from those in the field.”