Jamaica currently comes last in the English-speaking Caribbean on the percentage of eligible students enrolled in the formal school system (UNESCO 2018). There were approximately 439,448 students registered in Jamaican primary and secondary schools for the 2018/2019 academic year.

Our reasonable expectation for any student is for them to attain a level of proficiency to pass at least five subjects at the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate level in high school. Currently, the majority of our Jamaican students (56.4 per cent) have not been able to accomplish this.

The pandemic has worsened the situation in learning, school attendance, classroom engagement, and students meeting grade level learning targets. On March 13, 2020 the Ministry of Education, Youth and Information (MOEYI) directed all public and private schools in Jamaica to close given the confirmation of the first case of COVID-19 in Jamaica. On the whole, schools in Latin America and the Caribbean remained fully closed for 158 days from March 2020 to February 2021, longer than the global estimate of 95 days.

Compared to all the other regions this is the world’s longest school closure. Schools in this region opened fully for only six days in 2020, which is lower than the global average of 37 days. Accordingly, almost 60 per cent, or three out of five children in Latin America and Caribbean have missed an entire school year due to COVID-19 lockdowns across the world. (UNICEF report, March 2021)

“Children here have been out of the classroom longer than any other child in the world, [and] the loss will be more disastrous and far-ranging than in any other region for children, for parents, and for the society at large,” indicated Jean Gough, UNICEF regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean.

In Jamaica, the formal start of the 2020/2021 academic year was delayed by a month. On October 5, 2020 classes resumed for students using online and audiovisual (TV and radio) learning. Other learning kits were also used.

At that time, the MOEYI reported enrolment of 381,627 students across 872 schools. Only 65,426, or 17 per cent of them had access to a digital platform. (Back to School Report, October 2020, Week 1, Public Administration and Appropriations Committee [PAAC], 2021). By the middle of November 2020 the statistics exposed 402,635 students enrolled across 959 schools and 178,116, or 44 per cent having access to a digital platform.

While the rate of increase in student enrolment and their access to an online platform was encouraging, the data did not clarify the consistent levels of student attendance and participation in classes during school hours. However, it was clear from the ministry’s data that many students had developed “learning loss” as a result of their separation from physical, face-to-face interactive teaching in a classroom, and there being no access to Internet-enabled classes.

According to the MOEYI data, during the last semester of the 2019/2020 academic year, 50 per cent of our schools offered three hours of learning comparable to only three classes daily to students, while 32 per cent delivered only one hour of teaching (‘Time Out’, Caribbean Policy Research Policy Institute [CAPRI], September 2021).

The results from the Grade 4 diagnostic assessment tests demonstrated serious inconsistencies in many students’ understanding of critical concepts needed to stimulate their grasp across all subject areas. The majority of students received a total score greater than 50 per cent, but less than 75 per cent in all subjects. This was especially pronounced in mathematics and science at the grade 5 level. At the grade 6 level it was the same conclusions regarding the inconsistencies and the bulk of students receiving “a total score of 50 per cent or below in all subject areas, with most of them getting more than a quarter of the questions correct” (MOEYI responses to PAAC, October 2020).

In seeking to address the problem the MOEYI introduced a COVID-19 Student Mobile Intervention Framework for Primary and Secondary Level Students in English, literacy and mathematics so as to provide structure and one-on-one interventions for the most vulnerable students.

Simply put, this programme was to be rolled out across all six education regions islandwide to:

(1) develop contact lists for all students;

(2) identify locations to house the small group sessions;

(3) assign students to centres and groups;

(4) assign teachers to intervention groups;

(5) develop the schedule for each location, noting grade levels to be accommodated;

(6) identify retired teachers and tertiary students who could be trained to support the one-on-one and small group interventions;

(7) conduct sensitisation sessions for all stakeholders as needed; and

(8) monitor the implementation of the overall programme.

Minister of Education Fayval Williams addressed Parliament on September 15, 2021 on the official start of the 2021 academic school year: “Madam Speaker, we started this school year with more devices in the hands of our children and teachers than at any other point in our history, significantly reducing the digital divide in the education sector. To date, we have distributed approximately 125,000 tablets and laptops to our teachers and students with a special focus on students on PATH [Programme of Advancement Through Health and Education].”

With the implementation of the ‘seven-year high school programme’ Minister Williams declared that the COVID-19 Student Mobile Intervention Framework was a success connecting with 2,300 students within various communities in small groups of five for one-and-a-half hours, three days per week. She added that the mobile programme would be bolstered by the “yard-to-yard in every community” to identify additional students who were not being engaged in any form of learning and register them.

As the situation exists, the roll-out of the infrastructure to accelerate remote teaching and learning, especially in rural parishes, will not happen in the immediate future.

Connectivity

On September 27, 2021 Minister of Science, Energy and Technology Daryl Vaz said: “The analysis indicates that roughly 200,000 metres of new fibre optic cables must be installed between the parishes of St James and Portland along the north coast highway, 100,000 metres must be installed along sections of the south coast to repair or replace damaged cables, and an additional 300,000 metres of new fibre optic cables must be installed from each municipal corporation in the interior of each parish to facilitate connections to select government entities, such as public educational institutions.” 189 Public Wi-Fi hot spots are being initiated across constituencies through the Universal Access Fund (USF), eGov Jamaica Limited (eGov), and the National Works Agency (NWA).” Therefore, giving a student a digital device without the corresponding access to broadband or Internet services will not fast-track their supplemental needs, especially for those who now have to counteract learning regression as a result of the pandemic. We must, therefore, urgently step up the mobile intervention programme within communities with more boots on the ground to help our most vulnerable students in this time.

Corresponding decisions must also be taken in the short run for mandatory COVID-19 immunisation protocols to students in secondary school so we can get back to more physical interactive, face-to-face teaching. There are approximately 211,783 students enrolled in secondary schools. To date, 73,880 children between the ages of 12-18 years have been vaccinated.

Education has always been the great equaliser for upward mobility. COVID-19 has now disenfranchised many from this opportunity due to the snail’s pace the MOEYI has reacted to the pandemic. It’s been almost two years since its start here and many Jamaican students face a crisis in their educational development. Other jurisdictions have hastened their emergence from COVID-19, yet we continue to have mass ideation sessions and parliamentary statements with little delivery on our objectives.

The mantra of ‘Every child can learn, every child must learn’ is even more relevant now for directional speed and implementation for our intervention programmes. Failing to quicken our steps will only leave us further behind. Developing countries like ours cannot risk having uneducated people or we will continue to relegate them to poverty.