The education specialist and brainchild behind a privately-run Grade Two Learning Intervention programme is satisfied that the first phase of the project connected well with a majority of students targeted in the January to April 1 initiative.

Rachael McDonald, who coordinated the project that was crafted to address learning loss and fill gaps in numeracy and literacy that were created by the novel coronavirus pandemic, said that, of the just over 100 students of primary schools in the St Andrew inner-city communities of Seaview Gardens, Waterhouse, and Olympic Gardens, 90 benefited in the final analysis from the project funded and managed by J Wray & Nephew Foundation at the schools.

The grade two students from four schools across the three Corporate Area communities in which J Wray & Nephew operates — Seaview Gardens Primary, Balmagie Primary, St Patrick’s Primary, and Seaward Primary and Infant School — participated in the Monday to Thursday after-school, small-group programme, which has a part two set to start later in May for a two-month period.

Based on the fact that grade two students had not benefited from face-to-face classes in two years and suffered from broadband connectivity issues and, according to McDonald, lack of “technological tools, digital know-how and their inability to access and/or engage consistently with much-needed academic content, prioritised them as the targets for this specific intervention”, and made the project even more important.

“At the start of the pandemic the children would have been in kindergarten or basic school, about to make the transition to primary school. There was no emphasis on these students and they were at a critical stage. These were the ones just getting the hang of it with literacy and numeracy, and then things happened, and they had to stop,” McDonald related to the Jamaica Observer in an interview last week.

“Before they even returned to school, they would have been enrolled in a primary school that they had never seen, that they were accustomed to learning in a particular way…there were primary teachers trying to manage remote learning, but didn’t know how to make that transition. The teachers said that was an issue. Everybody was focusing on the PEP [Primary Exit Profile] students, and as a result these students were forgotten.

“It was eye-opening on a number of levels for me. I saw students’ willingness to engage and participate. Coming out of the pandemic there have been so many stories of struggles involving teachers and parents… the negatives… and you really hadn’t been able to tap into the positive stories and hear how children want to learn and how willing they are to learn when you make it fun and engaging.

“Just walking into those bases every afternoon, hearing them just willing to share their knowledge, baby steps and the progress was to me really special and phenomenal. Also, the willingness of the teachers and the parents involved in this programme just to keep it good. There were so many moving parts, yet the commitment and dedication remained the same.

“It didn’t wane. Those were the small things that happened that we need to magnify in light of all the gloom and doom surrounding education, and when you hear about intervention you just think drama. It was so positive. We had children in the programme who could not identify letters in grade two. They had no concept of letters, letter sounds, nothing at all,” McDonald went on.

Class size did not exceed 12 students, which McDonald said paved the way for better learning and amounted to a 6:1 ratio, as one teacher and one parent were assigned to each class.

“When it started, the principals knew that they needed help, the teachers knew they needed help and they knew that partnerships and collaboration was the only way to go, which is why this programme was slightly different. We gave each teacher a parent to assist or a grandparent from the bank of most vulnerable students,” McDonald stated.

“We had some issues with students just attending the programme initially because parents didn’t have any bus fares, they did not get a chance to prepare financially for that, so children wouldn’t join the programme, because their parents had no money for them to come to school. So our programme was unique in the sense that we gave students snacks every day, because food insecurity is a big issue in our communities, and food security affects the way children learn.

“What we also found was that a number of students may have had some developmental delays, especially since they had been out of engagement for two years, so what I called red flags were pretty prevalent. We had some students that don’t interact, they don’t socially integrate the way they should, and this affected the way that they learned, and I feel that, if we were able to sensitise parents and teachers a little bit more to this, it would be beneficial to the community on a whole.

“I see the need for continuing programmes like this across communities. If there are other companies and organisations that can, that would just be a part of our social responsibility,” she suggested.

And what can participants look forward to in phase two?

According to McDonald, consistency will be key as it drives success, “and what you hear a lot of the teachers say is people come into their schools and they do programmes, pre-pandemic, all the time for a couple months and that’s it. Learning is a lot about scaffolding, so it’s building up on what you know and taking students to the next level. It’s hard to start something and just stop it or put it on pause for a very long time. The consistency is what we are going to have to ride on.”

“We tried to go back to the things that they remembered in basic school, a lot of finger play, a lot of movement, and remember that learning is not limited to a table and chair.

“Moving forward we would want to engage the parents of the students a little bit more. Because we were back in school for the first time, a lot of parents could not come into the classes physically because of COVID restrictions and protocols. We would want to do more outreach with them, sensitise them a lot more to what we are doing … yes, we sent them notices, letters, and WhatsApp messages, but they don’t always look at those.

“They want to see you face to face. We managed to get that one-to-one experience in one school, but we would love to push parenting a little bit more in the future programmes and to really connect with the parents so that they understand why we are doing this, and just to share what they can do at home too,” McDonald said.