Is the Caribbean education system properly outfitted to ensure that online learning matches global trends?

BY LA SHAWNA GRIFFITH

COVID-19 has reshaped the way in which the education sector operates. Many teachers in the Caribbean have been forced to teach their classes predominantly using the online platform Google Classroom.

Despite many stating that the online school system was a necessary tool, many young men and women have been left behind.

In Barbados for example, young men and women are faced with not having electricity, Internet and/or technological devices. For some of them who were issued a technological device from their primary or secondary school, it is proving to be inadequate for the workload of Google classroom.

Teachers painted a bleak situation of some students not having access to electricity, internet and/or a technological device and many of these generous teachers have been delivering the printed lessons and homework to the homes of the children they have realized are not attending the online sessions.

Up to last week, the President of the Barbados Secondary School Teachers’ Union discussed the fact that teachers and students need to repeat a year for teaching and learning.

In an interview with Barbados TODAY she argued that students in Barbados are at a serious disadvantage as teachers and students have lost a lot of time due to the ad hoc nature of the online learning introduction.

“In the BSTU, our position is that they should really seek to defer exams this year. The reality is that children who are presently in fifth form, last year only had two terms of teaching because the last term would have been online, and it was a term of revision and consolidation. Because of the digital divide, we have had students without devices or others without connectivity and therefore they were not able to benefit in the way that they should.”

Despite her reservations and the hundreds of parents who took to social media stating their displeasure, a notice was issued on Government Information Service, stating that students did have CXC examinations on January 25^th, 2021 and that they should report for the exam. To date the Ministry of Education has not spoken about the current issues plaguing students at the Caribbean Examination Council.

However, the issues with online technology are not only limited to the island of Barbados. A few weeks ago, I spoke with Shivam Teelucksingh who was one of the recipients of the Angostura Championships in Trinidad and Tobago. His initiative was offering free technological repairs to students who otherwise would not have been able to access the Google classroom.

“It became very demanding as people were coming to my house every day just to get the help. It started off as software repairs, and I saw that people were in need, so I started to donate my money and my time. Eventually, it grew to a point where I would go around different areas in Trinidad and fix two devices a family. We keep track of everything with invoices, so we know how much it would have cost,” he told me.

Back in May, teachers in Jamaica noted in the Jamaica Observer they needed schools to be properly outfitted in order to ensure that the online classes could match global trends.

“Things need to be implemented and schools need to be sufficiently equipped with the necessary technological features, and the necessary technological apps so we can function outside of the space. As teachers, we need to set ourselves in motion because of this paradigm shift into learning to do things” the educator said.

In the Caribbean, the education system has always been light years behind in terms of having blended education as flipped classrooms, station and lab rotations are not properly implanted and many Caribbean countries have not fully implemented a blended learning structure.

It is recommended that they implement a blended learning system, which is personalized for each learner. Students would be able to not only use technology for classes but be able to use the technology to learn things like coding, which could become a new niche market for small island developing states.