Lack of access to critical telecommunications infrastructure which is believed to be closely linked to poverty is again preventing some of the country’s children from participating in online school, educators said Wednesday.
The number of children who fail to log on to online classes has not been reported by the Ministry of Education two weeks into the Michaelmas term that has been all online.
But Barbados Union of Teachers (BUT) president Pedro Shepherd called for community centres and schools to accommodate those who cannot afford to access the internet.
In a Barbados TODAY interview, Shepherd complained that parents who are customers of both of this country’s main telecommunications giants have been disconnected from the internet. In some cases, Shepherd claims they have no electricity and according to his investigations, some don’t have telephones and have therefore failed to relay the issues to their respective schools.
He said: “It has not been smooth sailing because we have been online and we have a number of schools both on the Flow and the Digicel network out of internet in some cases, out of phone services in other cases.
“The Ministry [of Education] has asked for the information, we have submitted it and they are trying to supply services to them, but that service is slow in coming, so there are students today who are still unable to get online because they don’t have the infrastructure.”
In response, Shepherd suggested scores of school monitors be hired to assist with face-to-face classes to be deployed across the island to assist with community classrooms where students can access their lessons.
“You would just have maybe a case of five or six children. It is not a case where you are populating a school, but you want all the children to be able to access the internet and the online school, so you’ve got to find a way,” said the BUT leader.
“For example, if there are students in the Pine area without internet, they can go to the Parkinson Community Centre and maybe monitors can go and assist, because right now the monitors are at home doing nothing and I think they are being paid. I know a parent, for example with four children in school. At this point, I don’t think they have any devices, no internet.”
Principal of St Bartholomew’s Primary School Anthea Gill told Barbados TODAY that in her experience, numerous “social challenges” have also been making online classes more difficult for teachers.
“There are maybe parents who would like to provide the right environment, but their household is not conducive,” Gill explained. “You may have a lot of people using the same space and those sorts of things can’t really change at the time. But I think attitudes can change, even if you don’t have the best of facilities or whatever, you make do.”
The Christ Church school principal noted that with support from the Ministry of Education, her staff have been going beyond the call of duty to provide interesting online lessons. But she acknowledged that even with the noblest efforts, some academic areas or year groups are very difficult to teach in an online environment.
“For instance, the ones who are just coming in from nursery do not have ingrained in them how to conduct themselves in a classroom, so when they go online you would see that they do the same things they might have been doing if they were in nursery. After a couple minutes, they are no longer interested in you,” Gill explained.
“I think we need to have some in-person school at some point in time so that we can get them to understand what to focus on when it comes to doing your work. There are also some concepts that we need to have in front of us, because it is best that you have the practice and reinforcement and so on immediately.
“So I wouldn’t hope to be away from school for an extended period. The last two years when we had to be online, at least the children would have been in school at some point in time, so that helped. We are at the start of the new school year, so hopefully, we will have the same opportunity this year, where we have been online for this term, but I pray to God that next term, we can be in school.”
BUT president Shepherd commended education authorities for starting to adjust the curriculum to suit online learning but complained that the same environment continues to slow down their learning progress.
“So we are trying to do the best under the circumstances, but certainly where we want our children to be next year, certainly the online environment is not going to get them there,” he said. “The only thing that would get them where we want them to be is some good solid face-to-face instruction. So we need to work on getting our COVID numbers down, getting our school audits in place and working in a system where students can get back to safe classrooms and have face-to-face instruction.”
(kareemsmith@barbadostoday.bb)
