The Tribune

By LEANDRA ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

lrolle@tribunemedia.net

ACTING education director Dominique McCartney-Russell yesterday confirmed the Ministry of Education has rescheduled the testing of students for learning loss, saying officials are now hoping to begin the exercises in November.

“We have a company that is going to assess the children, but we have not started it as yet. We actually put together a team. We have a project manager and her team and they are going to (ensure) that it gets done,” she told The Tribune yesterday.

“The team is actually reviewing all of the documentation so I can’t give you a specific date. We are trying to have this done by the end of November. We’re really working assiduously to get this done.”

In July, Education Minister Glenys Hanna Martin announced plans to have students tested for learning loss in early October.

She said the move would allow officials to have a better understanding of COVID’s true impact on education in The Bahamas.

“We will then know definitively the true impact of COVID-19 on learning in The Bahamas and the necessary responses will be implemented by way of acceleration programmes for each student where applicable,” Mrs Hanna Martin said in the House of Assembly.

Asked about the delay yesterday, Mrs McCartney-Russell said: “The delay really is putting the team together in ensuring that we got the project manager and their team.”

However, she could not say how long it will take for officials to test students.

Nonetheless, she said they were excited to begin to plan the way forward so students can quickly catch up in areas where they are challenged.

“I’m so excited about it because this will be the first time that we’re checking all of these children to discover what are some opportunities for remediation so we’re excited,” she said.

“There are some losses. The children, they were in the virtual environment and while some of them did very well and were able to cope in that environment, some were not able to and we want to ensure at the end of the day that we catch them very quickly so that they don’t fall further behind.”

Education officials have previously lamented the pandemic’s effect on education as quite severe with data showing significant learning loss.

This is largely due to classes being held in a virtual format for most of the pandemic as opposed to an in person setting, the latter which has fewer distractions.

“We do have the after-school enrichment programme for literacy and numeracy so we do have those after school,” the acting director said of the ministry’s catch-up programmes for students.