Un­pre­dictable weath­er, un­ex­pect­ed pow­er out­ages and oth­er con­tin­gen­cies are more rea­sons why the Gov­ern­ment re­quires com­pre­hen­sive plan­ning and con­sul­ta­tion with stake­hold­ers in its re­sump­tion of on­line de­liv­ery of school cur­ric­u­la and pos­si­ble in­tro­duc­tion of a par­al­lel sys­tem of class­es to stu­dents in this coun­try, says TTUTA Sec­ond Vice Pres­i­dent Kyr­la Robert­son-Thomas.

Speak­ing to Sun­day Guardian on Fri­day in the af­ter­math of heavy rains and wind gusts which caused pow­er out­ages and fall­en trees in some ar­eas, Robert­son-Thomas said the As­so­ci­a­tion did not wish to ap­pear to op­pose find­ing so­lu­tions in these times of world cri­sis. She, how­ev­er, stressed that the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion (MOE) must en­gage stake­hold­ers in care­ful plan­ning, or­gan­i­sa­tion and arrange­ment of class­es un­der a con­tin­u­ing on­line sys­tem, and a pro­posed par­al­lel ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem where class­es would be con­duct­ed vir­tu­al­ly and face-to-face at the same time.

"On­line is new to teach­ers, it's new to stu­dents, it's new to par­ents in a num­ber of fields. It's not as if we've been prac­tis­ing this modal­i­ty. We are work­ing with our teach­ers. TTUTA would have had some work­shops last year to get them to un­der­stand on­line class­es, on­line eval­u­a­tion.

"We still do have quite a num­ber of stu­dents who don't have in­ter­net or even like to­day, based on what hap­pened with the weath­er last night (Thurs­day) in­to this morn­ing, we are go­ing in­to a meet­ing right now and I have two of­fi­cers who have to use their phones and their lim­it­ed da­ta and pow­er be­cause they are with­out elec­tric­i­ty. These are some of the things that hap­pen with on­line class­es. You could have the best les­son planned," she said.

On Au­gust 26, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley hint­ed at a par­al­lel ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem if suf­fi­cient num­bers of stu­dents did not vac­ci­nate.

As far as seek­ing to es­tab­lish par­al­lel class­es, es­pe­cial­ly in the short term, she re­it­er­at­ed that it would be "prob­lem­at­ic". She said in­ter­net con­nec­tiv­i­ty as well as timetabling would be chal­leng­ing for sec­ondary schools who al­ready face prob­lems in or­gan­is­ing sched­ules.

"As to whether our schools are equipped for in­tro­duc­ing and sus­tain­ing this, at this point we do not think that the schools are able to do this. Timetabling would be an is­sue. We have a num­ber of schools that are not equipped for on­line trans­mit­ting be­cause there is poor band­width or no band­width at all. So there are a num­ber of things that still need to be ironed out with the Min­istry."

So­cial dis­tanc­ing would al­so re­quire tremen­dous ef­fort, she said.

"If you have to keep the pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions of six feet by six feet, most of our class­rooms are not built for that so if you have a class of 30 chil­dren, you may find that the stan­dard class­room may be able to ac­com­mo­date safe­ly, eight or nine stu­dents. The oth­ers would have to be spaced out in­to oth­er rooms. Are they to be on the school com­pound or come out on oth­er days, as they (the MOE) were sug­gest­ing in their draft?" she asked.

She said with the spread­ing out of stu­dents as pre­scribed by so­cial dis­tanc­ing reg­u­la­tions, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gats­by-Dol­ly had sug­gest­ed that there would be sub­sti­tute teach­ers to pro­vide su­per­vi­sion.

"...but sub­sti­tute su­per­vi­sion is not (ed­u­ca­tion­al) in­struc­tion she said. Those things have to be worked out.

"Can a teacher stay in one room, be­cause many of our schools do not have par­ti­tions and give in­struc­tions here and in the next few min­utes, move to the next room to do that? Those are the things that we have to look at and see whether they can work seam­less­ly in terms of how we can get the best out of the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem now."

Robert­son-Thomas lament­ed that even in terms of par­ents col­lect­ing as­sign­ment pack­ages pre­pared by teach­ers for some stu­dents who re­main with­out in­ter­net ac­cess, many of the pack­ages are yet to be picked up by the par­ents and giv­en to the chil­dren.

Ac­cord­ing to Robert­son-Thomas, these is­sues had neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed stu­dent per­for­mance since the pan­dem­ic hit and al­though the min­istry had been mon­i­tor­ing stu­dents who had been most af­fect­ed, the sit­u­a­tion had to be ur­gent­ly ad­dressed.

"As I said to the me­dia when the Prime Min­is­ter an­nounced this vac­ci­nat­ed against un­vac­ci­nat­ed which is go­ing to be an­oth­er is­sue, we reached out to the min­is­ter to ask when we could come to the ta­ble to see how we could work things out. By What­sApp she in­di­cat­ed that that it will be done, so we are await­ing a for­mal in­vite to sit at the ta­ble with the min­istry," she said.

She said teach­ers re­port­ed for du­ty on Thurs­day and Fri­day as was the norm for the be­gin­ning of the Sep­tem­ber term when teach­ers would re­ceive class as­sign­ments be as­signed class­es and plan class­es school work with their re­spec­tive ad­min­is­tra­tions. Some re­port­ed back vir­tu­al­ly, while oth­ers did so in per­son.

Robert­son-Thomas said she was not aware of any is­sues with teach­ers be­ing placed in un­com­fort­able con­di­tions or sit­u­a­tions as pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions were be­ing fol­lowed by prin­ci­pals. She said large num­bers of teach­ers were yet to re­ceive the vac­cine. Any teacher who did not re­port ei­ther vir­tu­al­ly or in per­son would have to ap­ply for the days.