Education Minister Encourages Students To Participate In Summer School

Minister of Education, Youth and Information, Hon. Fayval Williams, is encouraging students to participate in the National Summer School, which will begin on Monday (July 5).

“We are encouraging our students to access the programmes that will be available online [and] face to face. To the extent that they don’t participate and they don’t do anything else over the next two months, then when they get back [to school] in September they might be a little rusty and others will be a little bit ahead of where they are,” she noted.

Mrs. Williams was speaking at a town hall on the National School Learning and Intervention Plan (NSLIP) held virtually on June 30.

The NSLIP will allow for an increase in the academic performance of students enrolled in the programme over the summer period and will also provide academic enrichment activities for targeted students through its intervention framework.

The Education Minister said under the summer initiative, students from grades one to 11 can access teaching and learning focused on the core subject areas such as mathematics, English language, social studies and science.

She noted that for the online component, the sessions will be held two hours per day, Monday to Thursday “but we will make available to the students on a self-directed basis, other hours of the day, that means they can log on and still have access to the lessons online”.

Service providers Learning Hub, EduFocal and One-on-One Educational Services Limited will deliver the online sessions.

“They have come on board to help us in terms of providing tutors for your children during the summer,” Mrs. Williams said.

As it relates to the face-to-face component, the Education Minister said that this is targeted at students who have not been consistently engaged with the education system.

“So, we have a programme that will identify those students, sit with them in groups of up to 15 to ensure that we can engage them, so that when we begin in the face-to-face world in September, they will not be lost when they get back to school,” she noted.

“We believe it’s important that we continue this learning experience over the summer to help our children recover from the learning loss and we are asking for your support,” she added.

For more information on how to register for the National Summer School programme, persons may visit the website https://educate.gov.jm/.