An­na-Lisa Paul

As part of the prepara­to­ry process for the an­tic­i­pat­ed re­open­ing of schools in Jan­u­ary 2021, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has com­piled a draft doc­u­ment out­lin­ing mea­sures defin­ing the new nor­mal and what will pre­vail once Min­istry of Health of­fi­cials grant ac­cess to re­turn to phys­i­cal class­es.

Among the pro­posed mea­sures will be a hy­brid learn­ing sys­tem con­sist­ing both on­line class­es and phys­i­cal in­ter­ac­tion in class­rooms; stag­gered hours for the ar­rival and de­par­ture of stu­dents; so­cial dis­tanc­ing in class­rooms; pref­er­ence of class as­sem­blies; and sep­a­rate re­cess; and lunch and bath­room breaks to avoid con­gre­ga­tion in wash­rooms and cafe­te­rias.

In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly ad­mit­ted the cur­rent term has been chal­leng­ing.

“It was very dif­fi­cult at first be­cause it was new and the con­cept of hav­ing to be to­tal­ly on­line…that was not the plan,” Gads­by-Dol­ly said.

Say­ing a blend­ed for­mat ap­proach had to be scrapped two weeks be­fore schools were due to re­open in Sep­tem­ber be­cause of the tra­jec­to­ry of COVID-19, she added, “It was a leap men­tal­ly, and the phys­i­cal­ly and lo­gis­ti­cal­ly to get that on track. Since then, it has set­tled down.”

But Gads­by-Dol­ly said they have since analysed da­ta and re­vised the guide­lines is­sued at the term’s start and have found that teach­ers, par­ents and stu­dents are now more set­tled as they un­der­stand what is ex­pect­ed of them.

While they are un­cer­tain if schools will re­open in Jan­u­ary as sched­uled, she said the au­thor­i­ties are aim­ing to be ready when the time comes.

“We are an­tic­i­pat­ing that we should get back face-to-face some­time soon but we don’t know if it is Jan­u­ary, it de­pends on the pan­dem­ic and its tra­jec­to­ry. We know it must be done at some point, there­fore the prepa­ra­tions are be­ing made now so if it is Jan­u­ary, we in­tend to be ready and if it is not Jan­u­ary, we will be in a stage of readi­ness.”

In the draft doc­u­ment dis­sem­i­nat­ed to stake­hold­ers a week ago, Gads­by-Dol­ly out­lined the mea­sures that need to be in place and in­vit­ed sug­ges­tions and rec­om­men­da­tions

“We want this to work for all of us, it is in our best in­ter­est,” she said, adding once they re­ceive re­spons­es they will amend the doc­u­ment and send it back out for a fi­nal re­view so they will be ready for term two.

“We al­so want to bring the par­ents and stu­dents in­to the con­ver­sa­tion. Our biggest en­e­my right now is un­cer­tain­ty and peo­ple feel very un­com­fort­able when things are not sure and they are not clear…so even though we are in un­cer­tain times, we are do­ing the best we can to put a lev­el of cer­tain­ty to some things.”

Say­ing class­es will be split in­to two groups in the new hy­brid mod­el be­ing ex­plored, Gads­by-Dol­ly ex­plained, “It’s al­most like a bub­ble-type ap­proach.”

New learn­ing plat­form launched

Last Thurs­day, the min­istry al­so launched the Notes­mas­ter Plat­form. Birthed out of a part­ner­ship with the Com­mon­wealth of Learn­ing, Unit­ed Na­tions Chil­dren’s Fund (UNICEF) and Notes­mas­ter, Gads­by-Dol­ly said this new dig­i­tal re­source was specif­i­cal­ly de­signed to sup­port the cre­ation and shar­ing of in­ter­ac­tive con­tent be­tween teach­ers but can be made avail­able to stu­dents.

The plat­form is free to teach­ers and there is no lim­it to the num­ber of stu­dents who can be fa­cil­i­tat­ed in a teacher’s vir­tu­al class­room, she said, adding Notes­mas­ter al­so con­tains dig­i­tal copies of the CXC suite of sub­jects and re­sources.

To en­sure the plat­form is ap­pro­pri­ate­ly used, the min­istry will stage train­ing and sen­si­ti­sa­tion work­shops over the next six months. The work­shops will train teach­ers in dig­i­tal con­tent cre­ation and help par­ents and stu­dents learn how to nav­i­gate the Notes­mas­ter web­site. Teach­ers, par­ents and stu­dents can vis­it https://notes­mas­ter.com/ to view the web­site.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, as part of the arrange­ment, e-books are be­ing com­piled for use in the pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools, which will help to side-step the is­sue of copy­right.

She com­mend­ed the pri­vate and cor­po­rate sec­tors for step­ping up and pro­vid­ing elec­tron­ic de­vices for stu­dents. De­spite this, she said the num­ber of stu­dents ap­ply­ing has not moved from 65,000. Gads­by-Dol­ly said as Gov­ern­ment al­so moves to pro­cure de­vices, their fo­cus will be to en­sure sec­ondary school stu­dents have ac­cess to lap­tops, es­pe­cial­ly as the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil (CXC) will be mov­ing to­wards e-ex­ams.

She said $50 mil­lion has been al­lo­cat­ed to pur­chase de­vices and ten­ders will soon go out lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly as the min­istry is seek­ing to get the best price to get as many de­vices as pos­si­ble. They are, how­ev­er, aim­ing to ac­quire at least 30,000 de­vices.

Re­gard­ing the means test which is be­ing de­vel­oped in con­junc­tion with the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment to de­ter­mine which stu­dents re­al­ly need de­vices and en­sure they re­ceive them - she said it will be com­plet­ed in time for when the de­vices ar­rive in the coun­try.

Asked about how the min­istry is en­sur­ing teach­ers and stu­dents per­form, Gads­by-Dol­ly said mea­sures im­ple­ment­ed at the start of this term ad­dressed that is­sue and while the ma­jor­i­ty of both groups had set­tled in­to a rou­tine, there were ex­cep­tions on both sides.

She ad­mit­ted the col­lec­tion and re­turn of print­ed pack­ages, es­pe­cial­ly at the sec­ondary lev­el, was slow­er than at the pri­ma­ry lev­el. How­ev­er, she said the on­line en­vi­ron­ment was not a cure-all, as they had been re­ceiv­ing com­plaints of stu­dents be­ing late and not present for class­es al­though they were now at home.

Asked what her biggest chal­lenge on en­sur­ing the readi­ness of schools for a pos­si­ble Jan­u­ary re­open­ing, Gads­by-Dol­ly said, “Hon­est­ly, I think we are past the worst. The worst-case sce­nario was schools not open­ing at all and our chil­dren be­ing at home dis­en­gaged. We are at the point now where we un­der­stand re­gard­less of what, there is go­ing to be school.”