KEVON FELMINE
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

There is no doubt that the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic is mak­ing learn­ing more chal­leng­ing for chil­dren.

For ten-year-old Amy Scott and her sev­en-year-old broth­er, Keenon Sylvester, liv­ing in the rur­al Bras­so Seco com­mu­ni­ty, it is even hard­er to keep up with the school cur­ricu­lum.

Amy and Keenon at­tend the Bras­so Seco RC School, which, like the vil­lage, has no in­ter­net con­nec­tion. Their moth­er, Yolande Thomas, said no in­ter­net ser­vice provider of­fers a ser­vice in the com­mu­ni­ty, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for chil­dren to ac­cess on­line class­es.

On May 15, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion in­struct­ed schools to dis­con­tin­ue all face to face class­es and moved all teach­ing ac­tiv­i­ties on­line. It led to schools halt­ing the de­liv­ery of work pack­ages for stu­dents who do not have ac­cess to the in­ter­net or ICT de­vices. 

Ac­cord­ing to par­ents of pupils at­tend­ing the school, it is a chal­lenge for them as 40 per cent of the school pop­u­la­tion is still with­out de­vices. Many par­ents are un­em­ployed and they say it is too cost­ly to pur­chase phone cards for mul­ti­ple pupils week­ly.

“My chil­dren are be­ing left be­hind due to not hav­ing a prop­er in­ter­net con­nec­tion to help them. I am an un­em­ployed par­ent, and I find it dif­fi­cult to pro­vide a phone card every day to en­sure that they have da­ta. If not, they are be­ing left be­hind,” Sylvester said.

She said the teach­ers in­formed par­ents that they would no longer drop off work pack­ages be­cause of the in­creased rate of COVID-19 in­fec­tions. They ad­vised par­ents to se­cure in­ter­net ser­vice for chil­dren to ac­cess the work.
“I have to buy a phone card every day up here. It is rough­ly $250 for the week be­cause it is $27 for a phone card. You have to hook up a one day plan for the week, which is $25, and you have to buy two phone cards in one day.”
Be­fore May 15, teach­ers would usu­al­ly de­liv­er pack­ages to the school every Wednes­day for par­ents to pick up. They would al­so col­lect the pupil’s work from the past week. There are ap­prox­i­mate­ly 200 peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty.

The res­i­dents are plead­ing with Flow, Dig­i­cel and TSTT to ei­ther run lines in the com­mu­ni­ty or set up a hotspot so chil­dren can ac­cess WiFi to do their school work.
“The vil­lage is most­ly de­pen­dent on tourism: the choco­late tour, hikes and the Bras­so Seco hon­ey. They are de­pen­dent on tourism, and the out­er com­mu­ni­ties sup­port­ed them. Now, with this pan­dem­ic, par­ents are un­em­ployed. I know one par­ent went to sell crabs yes­ter­day to pay for a phone card to get da­ta for her child,” a mem­ber said.
In­com­ing Par­ent Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent He­len Janette-Ram­di­al said she has two chil­dren at the pri­ma­ry school and an­oth­er in sec­ondary school. While her chil­dren are do­ing work on­line, it is cost­ly.
Janette-Ram­di­al, a se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer, said not on­ly does she spend $249 for a da­ta plan for her phone, it is her three chil­dren and niece that has to use it. She works 12-hour shifts and the chil­dren can on­ly ac­cess da­ta when she is home.
“My In­fant Two son and Stan­dard One daugh­ter, they get work every day via What­sApp and then the teacher would have to call on Zoom for us to keep up... I am a work­ing moth­er, so be­cause it is my phone they are us­ing, some­times it keeps back their work be­cause the teach­ers are al­ways on time,” Janette-Ram­di­al said.
She said all the par­ents want is a ser­vice provider to help get a prop­er in­ter­net con­nec­tion, so their chil­dren can keep up with their stud­ies. While pupils al­so need de­vices, she said they need the in­ter­net first.
Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly says that schools can make every ef­fort to make up for the work missed by stu­dents who do not have on­line ac­cess once pack­age dis­tri­b­u­tion at schools can safe­ly re­sume. Gads­by-Dol­ly said that in the mean­time, ed­u­ca­tion­al ma­te­r­i­al from the Min­istry re­mains avail­able on the ra­dio, TV and news­pa­pers.
“We do an­tic­i­pate that based on the ro­bust mea­sures put in place to cur­tail the spread of the virus, pack­age dis­tri­b­u­tion should be able to re­sume soon with ac­cept­able lev­els of safe­ty. “
In Feb­ru­ary 2021, 35,000 stu­dents in­di­cat­ed that they did not have a per­son­al de­vice. The min­istry im­ple­ment­ed a means test to de­ter­mine those who need­ed as­sis­tance, which closed on May 14. The re­sults showed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 21,000 ap­pli­cants to date. 
Gads­by-Dol­ly said the min­istry con­tact­ed all schools re­gard­ing the pro­vi­sion of tablets, through Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty and in­ter­net ser­vice providers, with SIM cards and three months con­nec­tiv­i­ty for Stan­dard Five, Form Five and Form Six stu­dents. 
“These tablets were pro­vid­ed ac­cord­ing to the re­quests over the last few months. There­fore, those stu­dents fac­ing their crit­i­cal ter­mi­nal ex­am­i­na­tions should, at this time, have ac­cess to the on­line en­vi­ron­ment.”