ROSE HALL, St James — Permanent secretary in the Ministry of Education and Youth Dr Kasan Troupe has expressed concern that billions of dollars of Government-provided resources in the education sector remain underutilised.

According to Troupe, some educators are not taking advantage of the tools provided by the ministry.

“The same learning hub that the rich families have access to, we went into partnership with LearningHub and we bought licences for all grade four students — 40,000 licences — and we send them out to you every year. And teachers, I am going to cry. I am not getting value for money; you don’t even open the licence. We gave every single one of you an email address and we sent all the teacher-related bulletins to you,” stated Troupe who noted that only 500 teachers regularly access the emails.

In response, some educators shouted that they were not aware of the project.

The exchange took place at a TREND teacher sensitisation session and launch of the #HowweTREND Initiative held at Montego Bay Convention Centre, Rose Hall, St James, on Thursday.

In emphasising that books are available for teachers, the permanent secretary said the ministry has augmented what is sent to schools as part of its resources for teaching and learning, but some teachers have not accepted it.

“Last year we spent $2 billion getting materials into our schools for teaching and learning and this year we are spending another $1 billion to build workbooks,” stated Troupe.

She also pointed to the underutilisation of computer software packages provided to teachers.

“We spent $89 million to get you the Microsoft 365. I signed a new contract this year for another $89 million so you can get access to the [Microsoft] suite, and we know that some persons have not accessed [it]. We said you can download it to up to five devices and you only need the Internet once,” added Troupe.

The permanent secretary also spoke of educators’ low take-up of e-books for high schools.

“We bought books — over 40,000 licences for English language, [and] mathematics — so you don’t have to take the heavy books to school and into the classroom. You [can] put it on your laptop and you access the books… We have to pay – and we cannot get back the money,” stated Troupe.

She implored teachers to utilise their emails to keep up to date with information about resources provided by the education ministry as well as important developments such as the report from the Jamaica Education Transformation Commission (JETC).

The permanent secretary pointed out that the ministry has in the past been responsive to teachers’ needs. She cited the example of how it addressed concerns about the time-consuming writing of lesson plans.

According to Troupe, there were complaints that time spent on writing lesson plans from scratch could be better spent teaching. In response, she said, the ministry made prototype lesson plans available.

“Now, we have over 700 plans that are localised, developed by people like us, and they are on the website for you. You don’t have to start from scratch. You said to us, ‘Take away the administrative burden, we want to teach.’ And so we went and said, ‘Let’s develop these lesson plans’, and they are available for you,” relayed Troupe.

She also referenced $2 billion spent on laptops provided to educators as the COVID-19 pandemic raged on, equipment provided after benefits she negotiated were deemed “not appropriate”.

In the meantime, Acting Deputy Chief Education Officer Nadine Simms joined Troupe in her appeal, telling educators the tools were being provided to assist them.

“Annually, we spend at least $1 billion on resources and we are not getting the return on the investment. We are asking you, the teachers, to assist us in using, especially, our e-resources,” Simms urged before adding that e-books are available for grades four and six.