The Hon. Fayval Williams, Jamaica’s Minister of Education, Youth and Information, wants students to participate in the ministry’s upcoming summer school offering to make up for learning opportunities lost due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Education takes time; learning takes time and in order for us to have our students catch up to where they were before the pandemic and to move them further, we have to spend more time,” she said.
Williams was addressing a virtual Town Hall on Vaccine Sensitization for the Education System on Friday, June 11.
She noted that while students’ involvement will be voluntary, it is important that they can “recover smarter” from learning loss stemming from not being able to be in the face-to-face environment, unreliable internet connection or not having connectivity to log onto online classes.
“We are encouraging our students (to participate). Yes, we know you’ve been living through the pandemic and we know the hardship and so on, but we have to make all the preparations and we have to ensure that your education is still accessible, regardless of whether it’s summer, regardless of whether it’s night or day, and we have the technology, we can scale it up across the system and we have a responsibility to do so,” she said.