Editorial | Fully discuss school reopening

IN RETIGHTENING COVID-19 measures on Monday, Prime Minister Andrew Holness reiterated that part of his motivation was to create an environment in which students can return to classroom learning when the new school year begins in three weeks.

We, too, hope that is possible. But we are yet to hear the kind of conversation, involving all stakeholders, including parents and guardians, on how it is intended to make that happen safely. The discussion, thus far, has been fragmented and piecemeal.

Jamaica’s education system, fragile and inequitable at the best of times, has had a torrid two years since the onset of the pandemic. And students who can least afford the disruption have fared the worst. With the suspension of in-class teaching, there were attempts at online delivery of lessons. However, many children, mostly from poor families, were absent from classes. They did not have devices with which to log in, or when they did, they often had neither Internet connection nor the wherewithal to afford the service.

For many families, too, a child attending physical school is not only about education. It was also for the meal that some received. With physical school closed, the meals were not available. At home, especially in inner-city communities and rural areas, the children of poor families were often left unsupervised while their parents went to work or otherwise hustled for a living.

In the circumstances, it was hardly a shock when Fayval Williams, the education minister, reported in May that 120,000 students had disappeared from the education system. Neither their teachers nor their schools or the education authorities had heard from them.

That figure, to appreciate the enormity of the crisis, has to be placed in its appropriate context. It represents approximately one in three (29 per cent) of the enrolment in public primary and secondary schools. If all the absentees were from the primary institutions, it would be approximately six in 10 (59 per cent) of the students. Were they all from secondary schools, the fallout out would be marginally smaller – 58 per cent.

The education ministry has not reported if it has since found all of the ‘lost’ students, or what proportion of them were involved in its special summer classes to help children catch up on their lessons. But this group is a microcosm of a big problem whose fix will need more than broadband and tablets, although these are assets to any education system. Jamaica’s crisis requires getting children into classrooms for direct engagement with their teachers.

How to get them there safely, without unduly endangering their own health and the health of people they come into contact with, is a matter that has gained attention in the press, though little engagement, so far, from Minister Williams and her technocrats.

Earlier this week, speaking with this newspaper, Linvern Wright, the president of the Jamaica Association of Principals of Secondary Schools, wanted to know about the transportation plans for students, given the “level of indiscipline that spans public transportation”. It is a question to which we, too, and no doubt all parents whose children will have to travel by public transportation, want answers. These should not come on the eve of the reopening of school. That would be a recipe for chaos.

We were also taken aback that Mr Wright, the principal of a high school, and the president of an association of principals, remained unclear, at this stage, whether there will be sufficient teachers in classrooms to manage the requirements of a new teaching-learning environment. “We expect the Ministry of Education to seriously look at allocating the increased number of teachers needed to engage with students in face-to-face settings, where classes are now smaller and more teachers are needed,” he said. That is a matter, too, that cannot, or ought not to, be resolved on the day schools reopen, or afterwards.

Dr Parris Lyew-Ayee Jr, a geoinformatics expert – whose institute at The University of the West Indies, Mona, was used in the past to help determine which schools might be partially reopened in relatively safety – says that similar analyses should be used in working out how to get students to their various institutions in a broader reopening. “My concerns relate to the distance and time spent on public transport, as well as the logistics related to changing buses,” said Dr Lyew-Ayee.

Indeed, the whole purpose of the safety protocols, such as wearing masks and maintaining physical distance, would be defeated if they are adhered to in schools, but break down when students get aboard buses and taxis or trains, if indeed they run again for students in September, as it has been suggested will happen.

These concerns are not easy to solve. But we will have a better shot at it with frank discussion of the issues with everyone concerned – and not at the last minute.