Carisa Lee

Pres­i­dent of the Pri­vate Child­care Providers Nisha Hoyte says there is one group of stu­dents who will be left be­hind as schools con­tin­ue on­line whether they have ac­cess to de­vices and in­ter­net or not. That is preschool­ers - chil­dren be­tween the ages three and five.

Ac­cord­ing to Hoyte, who was speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew, these chil­dren have been out of school since March and can­not ma­nip­u­late de­vices to join vir­tu­al class­es.

“This age group for preschool­ers it’s very dif­fi­cult for them to sit on Zoom for 40 min­utes even for 20 min­utes, their at­ten­tion spans are very short nor­mal­ly in a face to face set­ting we have cen­tres and they can move in-be­tween and we can keep them en­gaged,” Hoyte said.

Ear­ly child­care learn­ing is not com­pul­so­ry in this coun­try but Hoyte said there are over 800 pri­vate reg­is­tered preschools and on­ly a quar­ter have been able to suc­cess­ful­ly im­ple­ment on­line learn­ing.

“Cur­rent­ly our chil­dren, un­for­tu­nate­ly, are go­ing to have a huge gap, “she said.

Hoyte said the young stu­dent’s short at­ten­tion span may be one rea­son they have not been learn­ing but a lack of de­vices in the house­hold or im­pa­tient par­ents are oth­er con­tribut­ing fac­tors. And be­cause the type of school­ing is not manda­to­ry par­ents see no harm in dis-en­rolling their chil­dren.

“It seems a lot of peo­ple think that there is no tech­nique be­hind what we do but teach­ing a child to read and write, teach­ing them ba­sic skills of be­ing able to put back on their clothes, wash their hands, go in­to the bath­room on their own, pack­ing back their lunch kits, be­ing able to fol­low di­rec­tions, hav­ing the skill set to un­der­stand that even though I am an on­ly child or maybe the youngest in my home I have to be able to share I have to be kind,” she ex­plained.

“Be­tween 0-5 years is when you build that con­nec­tiv­i­ty in the brain that fos­ters the ed­u­ca­tion through­out,” she con­tin­ued.

Skills Hoyte said will be dif­fi­cult to trans­late on­line.

Hoyte said the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion does not take them se­ri­ous­ly and has not met with them since schools closed in March. She called for Gov­ern­ment in­ter­ven­tion.

“We don’t even get a two min­utes in the Prime Min­is­ter’s con­fer­ence every oth­er week,” she said.

“I don’t know when we will be ad­dressed,” she con­tin­ued.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly who said her min­istry can­not di­rect­ly ad­dress their con­cerns but said she cor­re­spond­ed with the group both by let­ters and What­sApp. Gads­by-Dol­ly said she di­rect­ed them to the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

Hoyte said now that they know schools will not re­open in Jan­u­ary based on the Prime Min­is­ter’s an­nounce­ment on Sat­ur­day land­lords have start­ed evict­ing s preschool own­ers so many chil­dren may not have a school to re­turn to when it of­fi­cial­ly re­opens.

And there is an­oth­er is­sue, ac­cord­ing to the Pri­vate Child­care Providers Pres­i­dent while they ad­here to guide­lines and re­main closed sev­er­al black-mar­ket day­cares have sur­faced. Hoyte’s main con­cern was that these peo­ple do not have the rel­e­vant qual­i­fi­ca­tions.

“There are a lot of lit­tle places that are tak­ing in chil­dren and they have noth­ing to lose be­cause they are do­ing it in their homes but they do not have the prop­er train­ing,” she said.

She said they un­der­stand why chil­dren have to be at home but it’s no fault of theirs.