NASSAU, BAHAMAS — Bahamas Union of Teachers (BUT) President Belinda Wilson yesterday urged the government to provide a plan on how it will utilize the results of a recent survey detailing the learning loss of students throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Wilsons was referring to the Ministry of Education’s “Survey of Infrequent and Non Users of the Learning Management System”, which was conducted to ascertain the reasons why the learning platform is not fully utilized by the students who have never logged or who only logged on once or twice a day.
The survey questioned households on the experiences of each child in the home that used LMS, which represented some 453 children.
It revealed that of those surveyed, 369 children in the study used LMS less than three times a day.
The results also noted that of these students 45 percent had “some problem”, 37 percent or “a lot of problems” with the system, and eight percent of persons had challenges signing onto the internet service.
The survey also showed that of the children in the study that used LMS less than three times a day, 25 percent only had “some idea” and 32 percent did not “know how to use the internet” at all.
It further revealed that about 51 percent of the householders questioned had at least one child in the home that was not using LMS, which represented 363 children in the survey that did not use LMS.
Forty-seven percent of those students were using the system because their teachers used Zoom; 16 percent said their teachers use google classroom; 21 percent said their user ID and password does not work; 19 percent said they were no longer attending a public school; 17 percent did not have a device to use; 11 percent said they did not receive login information for the Ministry of Education LMS and seven percent said they had no internet services.
When the children that were not using LMS did not attend classes, 50 percent were watching television, 35 percent were watching videos on the internet; 26 percent slept; 23 percent played with friends, and 21 percent played video games.
Yesterday, Wilson insisted that she was not surprised by the results of the survey and asked what the ministry now intends to do that it has the data to support the concerns.
“It only confirms what I’ve been saying for the past two years, that thousands of students did not use the learning management system, that thousands of students were not attending schools virtually, that teachers used Zoom and Google classroom for their instruction, that user IDs and passwords did not work,” she said.
“Some students were no longer attending public schools. Students did not receive login information from the Ministry of Education and no internet service.
“All of these things were said and highlighted by the Bahamas Union of Teachers over and over and over because we were getting the information directly from former teachers on a daily basis.”
Wilson questioned whether what changes will be made to the curriculum and what new policies will be created and adopted based on the data.
She also asked whether anything has been done to improve the LMS since the results of the survey and what new strategies will be implemented to ensure that the same thing will not reoccur if schools have to revert to fully online learning.
“So changes must be made to improve the delivery of quality education to our students,” Wilson added.
“I implore, I urged, the Ministry of Education to begin the work now because as more time elapses, the wider the learning gap opens.”
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