COVID-19 affecting students, education system in Caribbean – Chair of COHSOD

As the coronavirus continues to sweep from country to country, it has affected approximately 1.5 billion students with run-on impacts for teachers and caregivers at the international level.

Over the weekend, Chairman of the Council for Human and Social Development (COHSOD), Hazel Manning in a statement said that within the Caribbean Community (Caricom), the COVID-19 virus has disrupted the education and careers of over five million students and 200,000 teachers across the basic education, skills for lifelong learning and tertiary education sectors, including the provision of special education.
In the Caricom region, a whole Government approach has been taken to manage the impact of COVID-19 at the national level.
As it relates to COVID-19 and education, Manning said that this is required since it helps with the decisions to ensure the continuity of education on the one hand, and enabling a swift recovery on the other.
The Chairman said that the closure of schools has impacted the earning capacity and participation rates of caregivers, in particular, single parents and those who are self-employed; challenged the health security of children who rely on the provision of school meals; increased the risk of exposure to incidents of physical, emotional and sexual abuse and hampered the successful integration of at-risk youth in continuing education.
“Teachers have also been affected. They are now being called to execute pedagogical innovation that many feel not prepared or trained for; challenging the quality of educational delivery and the efficacy of teachers. COVID-19 is rehearsing often aired propositions on the need for education systems to become 21st century ready; it is challenging expectations for continuing teacher professional development and creating new conditions of labour for the teaching force, made up mostly of women, who also fulfil obligations as caregivers”, she penned.
Since the outbreak of the deadly virus, Caricom said that COVID-19 has exposed even more the pestering inequalities of educational provision in many of their Member States (MS). They added that the epidemic has challenged their ability to deliver universal quality education to citizens.
As it relates to the education sector, COHSOD said that the readiness to respond to the provision of quality basic education at a distance, using online synchronous and asynchronous approaches has been prefigured by the 21st century readiness of the educational infrastructure.
They alluded that educational resilience requires an urgent digital transformation.
COHSOD said that their higher education sector appears most ready to respond to the provision of technology-enabled education in a crisis, with faculty and students of some institutions more ready to continue their educational careers in an online environment.
However, attention must be given to TVET institutions, and community colleges, to ensure that they too have the capacity and infrastructure to contribute to the normalcy of post-secondary education provision. The Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) has been a regional vanguard in the area of e-testing and has demonstrated their solidarity with the region through a proposal for a revised examinations strategy that aims to ensure the integrity of the examinations process, produce valid grades and sustain educational progression across levels of learning.
They added that it is evident that a critical paradigm shift in the educational provision is needed; according to them, there is a need to ensure educational resilience through digital transformation.
The Chair further called his colleague Ministers to action, and to aid in a swift recovery from COVID-19 by implementing measures that will protect the Caricom legacy which is the health, wellbeing and educational excellence of the children and youth of the region.