With the new school year, commencing in Anguilla on Monday, September 7, it will be back to face to face learning across the island. This follows the period when online learning, via various internet platforms, was the order of the day since schools were closed for social distancing due to the coronavirus.
However, between the current school year, September 7 and December 11, there will still be some form of online instruction, according to the newly-appointed Minister of Education and Social Development, Ms. Dee-Ann Kentish-Rogers.
“We are now going into our second phase with regard to reopening of schools – with face to face instruction – having already gone through a period of e-learning platforms,” she pointed out in a Radio Anguilla interview, a few days ago, with Keithtone Greaves. The Minister made the point, however, that face to face learning would include some forms of branded learning which would be extended to submitting homework online. The intention is to keep some of the e-learning platforms active during the face to face phase. She stressed that this was also important as “the Covid-19 situation is still very fluid and we want to be prepared in case anything happens, God forbid – that we are able to transition back to the e-learning platforms.”
The Minister said that over the past two months, since assuming office, she had been familiarising herself with the various systems of Education and Social Development, followed by a series of tours. The visits were particularly to schools under reconstruction, following Hurricane Irma in September 2017, and funded under the UK Government-financed Anguilla Programme.
She revealed that one of the newly-elected Government’s biggest issues, in coming to office, was the lack of finance for most of the new initiatives that were being proposed. “It caused us to do a little bit of re-thinking, a little bit of manouevring” she observed. It put a bit of delay on some of the initiatives that we were planning for, and we had to cut back our budget due to Covid-19.”
Among the matters being addressed is the need for new textbooks for students and the inability of parents to purchase them. The Minister was delighted that Parent/Teachers’ Associations had embarked, with the approval of Government, on programmes whereby certain sections of the business sector had undertaken to assist with providing some of the school books.
She said the Government was looking at the idea of state-purchasing books. “We are financially challenged, right now,” the Minister said. “But we are trying to create a pool of what books are available on the island so that parents can have access to them and make the best use of them; and then we will look outwards.” She was at the time making reference to “a used book-drive” whereby parents and other persons, having used textbooks, would make them available to students at a reduced cost.
