Education Minister urges flexibility after visiting Old Harbour school

"Hopefully schools will be able to use the various modalities that are available because it is not just face-to-face or nothing else. It's face-to-face with all the other modalities that are available now," Williams said. "They can still use the online, they can still use the audio visual, the workbook and so on."

Minister Williams was speaking to journalists on January 14 after the official handing over ceremony of a $110 million 10-block classroom at Marlie Mount Primary and Infant School here in Old Harbour.  The new block of classrooms seeks to address the longstanding issues of overcrowding and returning the institution to operate on a single shift.

That schools in the country continue to function on the two-shift system remains a priority of the government, Williams said.

However, budgetary constraints exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic will be a major deciding factor in how many more schools undergo expansion to be able to operate as a single shift in the short term.

While some persons are eager to return to the classroom for face-to-face learning, many parents, teachers and students are fearful about the idea as Covid infectious rate continue to rise on the island. A total of 129 schools have been participating in a government piloted face-to-face learning programme to determine best practices on the way forward. Majority of the participating schools in this pilot are rural based institutions, which are at a distinct disadvantage with poor internet connectivity the biggest challenge.

In an effort to clear up any misunderstanding on the approach of the government, Minister Williams said all options for continuous learning are on the table.

"We don't want a situation that we have heard of where the principal said that everybody has to come back to face-to-face," said Williams after also breaking ground for the construction of four classrooms for the infant department at Marlie Mount.

"That's not it," she continued. "We are still in COVID, we still have to be dealing with the contagion impact of it, and so we are saying to principals and teachers on the ground 'be as flexible as you can' in terms of accommodating those…"

"There are many students for whom the online system work, there are many teachers for whom it work and we encourage them to continue," she added. "But there are other students for whom the face-to-face is the better modality, let's get those children back into that mode."

And as the nation goes through the pandemic, she said, it is important that all available tools are utilise to "ensure that they get the quality of education we all want then to get".

Calvin Harris, principal of Marlie Mount is in favour of a "blended approach" which is in line with the Minister’s position.

Explaining his viewpoint, Harris said: “I would want to use this approach (for us) to explore the thought that even after Covid and students can come out for face-to-face that we probably would not want to return to the shift system because we are still in need of four additional classrooms but rather utilise the blended approach whereby there are days when students come online and there are days when they come face-to-face.”

Due to the pandemic and its far-reaching impact Marlie Mount Primary will in all likelihood continue to operate two shifts even when they receive the greenlight from the government to resume face-to-face learning, the school principal said.

“With the social distancing and even with the additional classrooms it is going to be a challenge as well because then of course the classroom size would be about 12 for the old building and about 15 or 16 for the new block. Most of the classes are above 30 students in a class,” he contends.