Anguilla’s Chief Education Officer, Mr. Bren Romney, is advising parents and guardians to be patient as his Department and the Ministry of Education continue to iron out some of the challenges the e-learning system is encountering.
Speaking during the Government’s Press Conference on Monday, September 6, Mr. Romney said in part: “We are dealing with the challenges that we are encountering. I want to remind persons what they are. One is no internet access in certain homes although we work with our community partners, Flow and Digicel, to provide low-cost access for educational purposes. We really want to thank those partners for doing that. There is also a lack of or adequate devices in certain homes, and we are trouble-shooting through all of these challenges.
“The solution for the lack of devices is two-fold. The first is that we are working with schools and teachers to schedule the virtual face to face sessions so that children in a home that only has one device can have the adequate time to deal with the various classes. Secondly, we are also providing learning packs for students who do not have adequate devices; and we are continuing to work with community partners to procure additional devices.”
The Chief Education Officer went on: “On that front, we have two very promising projects that the Minister of Education and the Ministry of Education, the Permanent Secretary, the Department, other Department members and I, have been working on with community partners.
“The first one is a device challenge project which you will be hearing more about. We are raising up to seventy thousand US dollars to procure devices – and we are very close to that target. The last time I checked we were just about three or four thousand dollars off that target. Those are the devices that will be coming in quite shortly, and we are very excited about that. It is [a project involving] APANY – (Anguilla Progressive Association of New York) and the Schulze Foundation – that’s the family for Aurora Resort.
“I think the Premier made some representation to that Foundation and to the owner, on our behalf, some time back and we want to compliment him on that. One of our former professors in New York, Yinka Lloyd, also made some representation to that Foundation, and I want to thank both of them. The result of that is now coming home. We are estimating it to be somewhere around a 100 – 155 devices in addition to the 100 devices that were procured last year, by Government, for students. That is commendable.
“We also have an ongoing project with Anguilla Initiative which is much larger, and which it has been working on for a little over nine months – and may be a little longer. This is an entire overhaul of our IT infrastructure to support e-learning at the primary and secondary levels. It is a project that involves 1.3 million dollars, and we have some partners who are holding discussions with the donors who are seriously looking at running a pilot [project] at the primary and secondary level for this larger project.
“We are excited about the results which will come to us. There will be multiple things. They will include an issue of devices for children and will strengthen our WiFi access at the schools; the integration of technology in the classrooms; as well as the provision of devices, other gadgets for teachers and so forth. As I said earlier, we are looking at the entire e-learning infrastructure and we are excited about what that will mean for education in Anguilla.”
Meanwhile, all public sector schools reopened in Anguilla for e-learning for the first two weeks. It is hoped that face to face learning in the classrooms will then begin, depending on the COVID-19 situation and the required protocols and restrictions recommended by the Health Team – and approved by the Government of Anguilla.
