ST ELIZABETH, Jamaica – Persistent internet outages have left students and staff at the Park Mountain Primary School, just west of Santa Cruz in St Elizabeth, at a disadvantage as teachers and school administrators are struggling to meet online needs.

Acting principal at Park Mountain Primary, Keisha Reid, told OBSERVER ONLINE on Tuesday that the school has been without internet service for a week. This against the backdrop that residents in Park Mountain had reported that internet access was restored to the area on Friday night.

However, their relief was interrupted as they have been left without the service since early Monday morning.

Reid said Park Mountain Primary, which has 496 students and 24 teachers, is dependent on internet access for digital learning and crucial administrative functions.

“It is affecting us. We have to check the correspondence from the Ministry of Education daily. We have to respond to emails. We are not able to do all of that because of the internet problems that we are currently having,” Reid said.

“The [mobile] hotspot is very slow, it is not working properly. I have to keep checking the emails in the [early] morning and respond to what is [necessary] and send out the different correspondence to teachers from the early morning before I come to work, because when I get here nothing like that can happen,” she added.

When contacted on Tuesday, a senior Flow representative told OBSERVER ONLINE that the checks were being made regarding the service outage.

Last Friday OBSERVER ONLINE reported on the issue.

Read: Uncertainty over resumption of internet service affecting St Elizabeth school, residents

Reid explained that the school depends heavily on internet access.

“Teachers have online workshops; we would normally do some of that at schools. Also they are saying to me that the data is not strong enough and they might have to leave earlier on some days to attend their workshops, so it is affecting us significantly,” she said.

“As it relates to teaching and learning, it has impacted that too. The children are not at home, so they are not online, but at the same time we normally have instructional aids that we would use in our lessons that require us to use the internet, so it has also affected that,” she added.

Meanwhile, unconfirmed reports suggest that this latest outage is due to vandalism.