Education dir credits task force and community walkabouts for success in getting students re-engaged with school system
NASSAU, BAHAMAS — More than 3,000 students who did not participate in virtual learning over the last 21-plus months have returned to the classroom, in part due to the reopening of schools last month and an education taskforce that has gone into their communities to locate them.
Another 4,000-plus students remain unaccounted for, according to Director of Education Marcellus Taylor.
“Prior to the formulation of the task force, we were concerned with the numbers of students who were not engaged in virtual platform at all,” he told Eyewitness News when contacted.
“Around that time — let’s say the end of the first term and the beginning of the second term — you had about 7,000, almost 8,000 students we couldn’t account for in terms participating on the platform — you know we were all-virtual in the first term.
“But once the task force was established and it began its work, essentially doing community walkabouts, we automatically saw that students started to engage on the platform in the first instance, and when we returned to schools for some form of face-to-face instruction…of course more students came to school, and so, we are seeing that the numbers are going down and down.”
Minister of Education Glenys Hanna-Martin also participated in these walkabouts.
Taylor continued: “As we are now back to some form of face-to-face, every day, schools are indicating that students that had not been seen for months or had not been on virtual for months were showing up and are becoming engaged.
Schools are indicating that students that had not been seen for months or had not been on virtual for months were showing up and are becoming engaged.
– Director of Education Marcellus Taylor
“It’s a culmination of the efforts that the taskforce is making in terms of the walkabouts and the public campaign to sensitize people to the importance of students being in schools and also the actual return to some form of on-campus learning.”
In October, Minister of State for Education Zane Lightbourne revealed that 15,000 of the more than 50,000 students registered at the time for the virtual learning platform had not attended regularly.
These included both high school and primary school students.
There were concerns among educators and government officials that those students would fall through the cracks and it would remain challenging to get them back on course.
Asked whether the learning gap was evident now that students are back in classrooms, Taylor said the assessment of students was ongoing as the first few days — with many students being rotated on days — has focused on transitioning and reorientation.
He said following that, education officials will determine what interventions are needed to fill the gaps.
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