Principals Eye Learning Gaps

The return to classrooms for hybrid learning is expected to assist the Ministry of Education with an assessment of the learning gaps created since March of 2020 when in-person classes were closed. For the most of the past two years, students have been engaged in online classes, and so when News Five spoke with principals across the city today, we asked them for their assessment of the situation on the ground. We start with Maud Williams Principal Deborah Domingo, who coincidentally was the former C.E.O. in the Ministry of Education under the Barrow Administration.

Deborah Domingo

Deborah Domingo, Principal, Maud Williams High School

“Not through formal examination, but just looking at where we are in the curriculum so that’s one of the things we had to do during the Christmas break – look at what was actually covered September to where we were against what’s in the curriculum and it is definitely slower. So what will be covered in a year using hybrid or strictly remote learning won’t be what really should be covered in a school year so certainly there will be gaps.”

Salome Tillett

Salome Tillett, Principal, Saint Catherine Academy

“We have been working with all our students from day one, so what we noted was students who had unreliable internet, who had little parental support at home and those were the students we have had to work harder with and those are the ones we say have to be on campus right now. In terms of a learning gap, I think it would not be as pronounced as if it were a paper package; fortunately, we didn’t have to do that.”

Felix Sutherland, Principal, St. John Vianney Primary School

“We hope that we could get the support of the truancy unit because this is a time that we need them to help us to reach those students who might have changed address. We have numbers that we ring and they ring off the hook and we can’t make contact with them and so we need their support now more than ever. It will take everybody’s intervention, everybody’s effort and we hope that when we call on them, we get that.”

Duane Moody

“So you’d say that we’ve lost some students? It don’t seem like they are going to come back?”

Felix Sutherland

Felix Sutherland

“I wouldn’t say that we lost some students; we are unable to track them at this time. I am cautiously optimistic; we are not able to track them at this time. The numbers that we have for them, they are not answering them, some students have not done the packages that we offered, some were not participants in the online classes so we know it will be a challenge for us to locate them and get them back on track.”