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Thousands start new academic year all online

by Anesta Henry
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Thousands of students were at school from their homes on Monday as the new school year kicked off fully online.

President of the Barbados Union of Teachers (BUT) Pedro Shepherd told Barbados TODAY that while he did not receive many reports from his membership, a few teachers did point out that it was a tiring day and suggested that they were ready for a vacation.

Shepherd reported that as an Information Communication Technology (ICT) specialist he experienced a hectic day as parents collected and returned devices for their children, while others needed assistance getting the devices ready to access classes.

Shepherd said: “So I guess all other ICTs across the country had a hectic first day and the teachers as I said, one reported, feeling tired and ready for holiday so I guess that is the feeling across the system”.

But a return to physical classes could only be possible based on the students’ uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine, said Barbados Secondary Teachers Union (BSTU) president Mary Redman. The Pfizer jab is available only to high school students.

Redman said: “That is really what is optimal in terms of providing the type of environment that we need to have our children in. The vaccine is the ultimate layer of protection against COVID. The vaccine will help to provide the type of environment in the school that we need to resume our face-to-face instruction.”

At Charles F Broomes Memorial Primary, principal Dr Monica Walton declared the Government Hill school got off to an excellent start with online general assembly for classes 3 and 4 where over 150 students were present. She said the other classes had assembly with their class teachers and that also went well.

“I am generally happy with how the term started,” Dr Walton told Barbados TODAY. “The parents were there with the smaller children to assist them and things went relatively well. From all reports the students are settled, they are eager and they are excited to be back at school. The children are excited and keen about school.

“We didn’t have any major difficulties. But I know leading up to school like yesterday, we had issues with names dropping out of the system, but we were able to rectify that and throughout the course of the week we will monitor our situation.

“Tomorrow we will have general assembly with Class 1 and Class 2, Wednesday it will be Infants A and Infants B, Thursday it will be Reception and the Special Unit and Friday we wouldn’t have a general assembly, but we will have our Health and Wellness session.”

Principal of The Ifill School, Akil Ifill said the private school which has been fully online since last April, began the new school year two weeks ago with students being engaged with few distractions.

Ifill said: “We have planned this long in advance, since last year. There are checks and balances that we have in place. Students are able to work. It is a very sophisticated system and it is one that we have worked really hard to be able to have this level of technical proficiency, especially from the students end, which is the user experience.

“And that is one of the issues with the way the Government has gone about doing it, they did not do a lot of research into the user experience from the student end, and also in the way how we deliver the class. We have had a quite great time thus far; the students have done work and I am about to correct some of the work for them actually.”

(anestahenry@barbadostoday.bb)

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