KINGSTOWN – Thousands of children in St Vincent and the Grenadines could be out of school beyond September due to direct and indirect consequences of the pandemic.
The country’s Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves has however declared that the country has received enough electronic devices to facilitate virtual learning across the board.
Furthermore, the UNICEF office for Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean has pledged to assist education officials with the rollout of virtual learning for hundreds of children in shelters.
The eruptions at the La Soufriere Volcano have resulted in a major dislocation for the educational system. Those schools closest to the volcano’s orange and red zones are blanketed in ash and therefore are not accessible while many learning institutions in the ‘safe’ zones are being used to house evacuees.
“There should be no disruption of education no matter the situation,” declared UNICEF Eastern Caribbean Representative Dr Aloys Kamuragiye.
“So we had a conversation with the honorable Camillo Gonsalves, the Minister of Finance and started to discuss a strategy…especially for children preparing to sit examinations and transitioning to secondary education. We have to avoid a situation where this disruption undermines the accumulation of the human capital for St Vincent and the Grenadines. And then when you lose the human capital, that means that you lose the social economy.
“So the idea is to support the rollout of online education. The good news is that I learned from the Honorable Camillo that most of the children have tablets. So the question was how to ensure that in shelters, there are spaces for the children to concentrate on online education instruction and some content that you can learn online,” the UNICEF representative added.
When asked about a tentative date for the face-to-face resumption of school, Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves revealed: “Too early to say, much too early to say. I keep my fingers crossed and I pray that we can get out in time, clean the schools and get out in September, but that is very ambitious.”
He explained that prior to the recent eruptions, electronic tablets were delivered to secondary school students and for primary school students preparing to transition to secondary.
“Because of a procurement problem, we didn’t get tablets for the remaining primary school students, but a few days ago, all the remaining tablets arrived and the ministry is working out a system to get the tablets into the hands of the children,” Gonsalves disclosed.
“Of course they are in private homes, shelters and so on and so forth, but this week, the ministry of education and the officials will give us the recommendations and the political directorate will interrogate the solutions which they suggest and come up with something to get the remainder of the tablets for the rest of the primary schools,” he added. (kareemsmith@barbadostoday.bb)
