While some chil­dren may be ex­cit­ed to re­turn to school in pro­mot­ed class­es this Sep­tem­ber, the in­equity in learn­ing dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic means that some have to re­peat the past year.
Wid­ows and sin­gle moth­ers trav­elled to Clax­ton Bay Sat­ur­day to fi­nal­ly ac­cess lap­tops and tablets for their chil­dren from Wid­ow Sup­port TT. With over 1,000 COVID-19 deaths, Wid­ow Sup­port TT founder Surya Nanan said there were many women whose hus­bands died from COVID-19 and were un­em­ployed for over a year. She said there were nu­mer­ous pleas for ham­pers, and while talk­ing to these moth­ers, they re­alised that their chil­dren did not have ac­cess to learn­ing de­vices. 
“You would be sur­prised to know how many peo­ple there are, whose chil­dren got kept back. There was a moth­er who called me. Her daugh­ters, two of them, end­ed up in Stan­dard Four be­cause the Stan­dard Five child could not go up to Stan­dard Five. She has to stay down in Stan­dard Four be­cause they did not have a learn­ing de­vice,” Nanan said.
One of the re­cip­i­ents, Lin­da Ro­jas’ sev­en-year-old daugh­ter, has to re­peat Sec­ond-Year. Ro­jas had one phone and could on­ly al­low her 12-year-old daugh­ter to use it to pre­pare for the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment. The sin­gle moth­er said she was a do­mes­tic work­er and was in and out of jobs dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. Her younger daugh­ter at­tends a pri­vate school be­cause she suf­fers from atopic der­mati­tis. How­ev­er, when the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion or­dered the clo­sure of all schools at the on­set of COVID-19, the pri­vate school went to ful­ly on­line learn­ing.
Ro­jas said she wrote a let­ter and even went to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to see if any help was avail­able. She said she even sent a mes­sage on Face­book to Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly, but there was no re­sponse.
“I am a sin­gle par­ent, but her (fa­ther) pays for her school be­cause she is a sick­ly child. She has trop­i­cal eczema, so it was re­al­ly dif­fi­cult to get her in­to gov­ern­ment schools. Every­body just kept telling me there was no space and they could not take her be­cause she has to keep tak­ing her med­i­cine. No­body could do that in those schools, so I had no choice but to put her in a pri­vate school. Then there is the fact that in the pri­vate school, there is on­line on­ly. There is noth­ing to say that they would give us a pack­age like in gov­ern­ment schools,” Ro­jas said.
With the help of Wid­ow­sTT, the Aranguez moth­er is hope­ful of get­ting a lap­top for her el­der daugh­ter be­fore she be­gins sec­ondary school.
Cathy-Ann Oree­gal al­so shared the same ex­pe­ri­ence as her son will re­peat his Sec­ond-Year class. Oree­gal said he used her phone some­times to com­plete his school­work but could on­ly at­tend 52 per cent of his class­es.
“So they kept him back,” Oree­gal said.
Af­ter lis­ten­ing to the moth­ers’ strug­gles, Tabaquite MP Ani­ta Haynes re­called ask­ing a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee meet­ing how the Min­istry de­ter­mined how many stu­dents were ac­cess­ing on­line class­es? As the Min­istry moves to­wards re­open­ing phys­i­cal schools, Haynes said not all schools could give learn­ing pack­ages to stu­dents with­out ac­cess to on­line learn­ing. She said that her of­fice did a lot of pho­to­copies to as­sist stu­dents in the con­stituen­cy.
“We are now in the process of dis­cussing the re­open­ing of phys­i­cal schools. That dis­cus­sion is on­go­ing but what we have seen is that over the past year, a lot of stu­dents have been left be­hind. It is not just a ques­tion of get­ting a lap­top to some­body. It is al­so con­nec­tiv­i­ty; it is al­so how are you are as­sess­ing the ac­cess to class­es. Are they learn­ing and are then able to be pro­mot­ed be­cause that re­dounds to all of so­ci­ety, whether or not we are teach­ing peo­ples in school on­line or not so that they can be pro­duc­tive cit­i­zens,” Haynes said.
With the un­cer­tain­ty of COVID-19, the need for more vac­cines, and the high­ly in­fec­tious Delta Vari­ant in the Caribbean, Haynes ques­tions how the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion could look to­wards the re­open­ing of phys­i­cal school with­out a prop­er as­sess­ment. She said that a sur­vey on how many stu­dents could ac­cess on­line learn­ing could de­ter­mine if there should be a blend of on­line and phys­i­cal class­es.