The Tribune

By LEANDRA ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

lrolle@tribunemedia.net

IN response to the head of the Bahamas Union of Teachers calling for an end to “social promotion” in schools, a local education official suggested the “long-standing” process would be tricky to eliminate.

After the national examination results were released last week, BUT President Belinda Wilson called on the Ministry of Education to repeat the 2020 educational year for those who need it and stop social promotion in schools.

Education director Marcellus Taylor said the ministry does not share the union’s position concerning the matter while adding it has no plans to repeat the 2020 year.

He said: “As it relates to the social promotion issue, that is a long-standing conversation that’s been had in The Bahamas and there’s a reason why it hasn’t gone away. We call it social promotion but it’s really an issue of automatic promotions and that is really the crux of that policy that has been long-standing.

“Because in order not to have that policy, you will then have all sorts of financial and resource constraints because once you start repeating people and they spend 13, and 14 and 15 and 16 years in schooling then you have to provide resources that extend beyond.

“The Bahamas is not the only country that does this. Many countries do it.”

Social promotion is the act of promoting a student to the next grade regardless of whether they have performed poorly or learned what is required to move on.

Yesterday, officials also addressed concerns with the ministry’s virtual learning system, which was said to have experienced some technical issues.

The Tribune was told that all students and teachers who tried to access the programme around 9.30am yesterday received “error” and “system maintenance” messages.

Responding to the complaints, Mr Taylor said the platform was a “work in progress”, adding there will be hiccups experienced from time to time.

He said: “We are working with a company called One on One and this is work in progress as we indicated on several occasions and that what we have is an LMS that is being customised for the Bahamian education system and that from time to time, there may be some hiccups along the way.

“We’ve made a lot of improvements to the system over the last several months and most teachers are able to get on it most of the times and so, this is just something that we have to accept – moving an educational system from a completely face-to-face reality and taking it to a completely virtual platform in the short space of time that we did… will indeed have the residual challenges of refinement.”

Meanwhile, education officials are still aiming for a February resumption of face-to-face learning on several islands after health officials determine what sort of impact the holiday celebrations have had on the country’s COVID-19 situation.

“Our expectation and our hope is that somewhere in February that we will be able to go to face-to-face,” Education Minister Jeff Lloyd said yesterday.

“It is anticipated that over the next week or so we will have a clearer picture of the consequences of this past holiday in terms of COVID cases and its impact on the healthcare system. And once that is assessed by the competent authority and the Ministry of Health officials, then the Ministry of Education will be properly advised in terms of those islands that do not have the benefit of face-to-face on when we will be allowed to do so.”

Government schools across the country reopened for instruction yesterday.

However, students in New Providence, Abaco, Eleuthera and Exuma are not yet allowed to report to school for in-person instruction and are instead doing virtual learning.

Once the greenlight has been given, the minister said some public schools where there is a large student enrollment might have to adopt the blended learning model, which involves a mix of face-to-face and virtual classes.

Mr Lloyd said: “Certainly, in some Family Islands, you can go face-to-face because they are able to observe the health protocols without difficulty. In New Providence, as you would know, we have many large high schools – C R Walker, C V Bethel and Anatol Rodgers and so on.

“It may be difficult but not impossible for us to assess full face-to-face in those particular schools if the protocols that are now obtained that is six weeks and so on must be observed but at that time, whenever we are given the all clear, we’re going to make a decision whether it’s going to be full face-to-face.

“There may be some schools that can go face-to-face. There may be other schools that will only be able to go blended and yet there may be some circumstances which must all be virtual.”