Education Ministry may establish its own channel

THE Ministry of Education is exploring the idea of establishing its own education channel, to provide valuable content to the island’s students, even after the COVID-19 pandemic passes.

Minister of Education, Technological and Vocational Training, Santia Bradshaw, revealed the above recently, noting that work is ongoing to create the necessary content to facilitate such.

Whilst expressing gratitude to all those corporate and private donors who recently came forward to provide electronic devices such as tablets to students in need, as the Ministry moved to a system of emergency remote teaching under the G Suite for Education platform, Minister Bradshaw acknowledged that sourcing the devices has not been without its challenges, given that online teaching is happening not only in Barbados, but across the globe due to the pandemic.

Stressing the need to leave no child behind, Bradshaw further noted that students who will be sitting the Common Entrance Exam this year, as well as those who are preparing to sit CXCs, were given priority in terms of the distribution of devices. She meanwhile revealed that there are close to 6,500 students in Barbados, who are still without devices. Whilst a decision was taken earlier to have some educational content streamed via the island’s lone TV station, Bradshaw suggested that the time may have come to have a dedicated educational channel for students, where valuable content can be shared on a consistent basis. This move, she said, would also be valuable well past the pandemic.

“We embarked on a programme with the assistance of private sector entities, as well as the Media Resources Department (MRD), to be able to catalogue a number of the programmes and content that would normally be used in school and we wanted to be able to transport that content into a format that could also be shown on CBC and we have started that process,” the Minister indicated.

“We recognise that regardless of whatever happens to COVID, the ability to have an educational channel dedicated to the Ministry of Education and even the Ministry of Culture was something that (even) after COVID, it’s something definitely that we need to start working on,” Bradshaw said. (RSM)