Education Minister Fayval Williams - file photo
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Fayval Williams
Education Minister Fayval Williams is confident that interventions that have been implemented to help students recover from the learning loss caused by the COVID-19 pandemic will be effective.
The World Bank has projected that because of the COVID-19 pandemic, current Jamaican students will essentially receive only 5.6 years of learning despite attending school for more than 12 years.
To bring students back into the physical environment, the Education Ministry has started several strategies including the Yard to Yard initiative to find students as well as an extra lessons, homework and summer school programme.
Mrs Williams says the corrective measures should help students make up the missed lessons, despite the World Bank's projection.
"We will continue to look at what will be possible during the summer for those students and parents who want to have extended school. Those are the initiatives we have... and will continue to utilise to help our children to recover to where they were before the pandemic and to move beyond where they were then to higher levels," she asserted.
Mrs Williams said parents are part of the intervention to get their children back to the acceptable level of learning.
"If your child is struggling with reading, sit with that child for half an hour. Let the child read to you and do that every day. You will see the results of that," she urged them.
The minister added that online tutoring is still available to assist students outside of school.
Attendance improving
The Education Minister said daily school attendance is almost back to the pre-pandemic level of 75 per cent.
However, Mrs Williams said this is still below world standard.
"When you compare Jamaica to world average, we are trailing the world average in terms of attendance. Now we're asking parents to send their children to school, we know that there are hurdles in the way: bus fare, lunch money, uniform and so on. We have to put more effort into continuing this yard to yard, hearing from parents as to what their particular situation is, and working with sister ministries to see how we can bring some resources to bear on the situation," she said.
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