Dear Editor,
We can only cross our hearts and hope for the best with the next common entrance batch as we watch our learners suffer so much learning loss once more. This is COVID lockdown all over again.
I am a parent of Grade Five children and since they started Grade One in September of 2019, they barely did a term of school before all schools were closed for approximately two years due to COVID protocols. I was asked to uplift worksheets for my children to complete at home for the first month out of those two years (approximately), a Zoom call was done between my children and their teacher and then there was no word of when again another set of worksheets would be available to pick up.
For the times that I was home, I did as much home schooling as I could with my children. They returned to school for face-to-face classes in the last few weeks of the Grade Three term and by then they were not doing much in school because the children were now being integrated back into the school environment and learning losses needed to be assessed and so on. It can be said that Grade Four is when the schools were actually fully opened and ready to go back to normal, finally.
I was one of the parents that were not fortunate enough to afford lessons for my children during the time they didn’t have school so my children, like many others, were not on the level they needed to be on when it came to curriculum expectations and they were put in the slow learners class with children as limited as they were in their school work but yet still had to follow the same curriculum.
My children are now in Grade 5 and are supposed to be preparing for examinations and still battling to keep up with the curriculum that was set, no doubt, without thinking of the massive learning loss that occurred during COVID lockdown and with the ongoing teacher’s strike that lasted a month out of last term and has started again on May 7th, ongoing for almost another month. We can only pray for our children because they are the ones suffering the consequences of all this from day one.
After Grade Five examinations has passed, it will be time to rush and pressure these children to meet a NGSA standard of education when they are still struggling to do basic Grade 3 level of work and it is not fair to them. Our education system needs intervention now.
Sincerely,
J. Smith
