CXC Prep

Original Research

(NOTE: The following is a summary of my original research which was created during October and November of 2021.)

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic, first beginning in Trinidad and Tobago (TnT) on the 12th of March, 2020, massively disrupted the way of life in TnT, including how the nation's children were educated.

The education of children in TnT is vital as it helps them to discover their passions, prepare for jobs and to develop interpersonal relationships and social skills. It is so important that access to education is a child's right and making education more accessible is one of UNICEF's sustainable development goals (United Nations Children's Fund, 2019).

My approach to doing this was to question a sample of students on how the quality of education and access to education were impacted. The main variables that were looked at were students' use of supplementary lessons external to their school, whether or not they worked during the pandemic, their internet access, how well their school transitioned and which type of schooling they prefer. To help give context to the data collected and to help interpret it, information from SST 13 (State Support Team 13, 2020) and the Analysis Of The 2005 Survey Of Living Conditions For Trinidad And Tobago (Kairi Consultants Ltd, 2007, 21) was utilised.

Findings

In Daniel Quin's study (as cited by State Support Team 13, 2020) it was found that establishing positive teacher-student relationships (TSRs) is associated with increased academic grades. Thus, the decrease in the quality of education during the pandemic was expected as only 36% of students reported that all of their teachers regularly attended classes. In the other 64%, it is unlikely, due to the low attendance, that positive TSRs would have developed, thus the students' education likely suffered. One student even reported that “teachers easily dodge online class by showing YouTube videos for an hour”. During online schooling, 56% of the students attended lessons because they felt as though a lack of teaching was being done at school. The respondents whose teachers all regularly attended online classes, however, on average attended fewer supplementary lessons, did more work and prefered online classes. This is likely because they were able to develop better TSRs.

Of that 56% of respondents that attended lessons, 35.7% of them spent $250 - $500 monthly and 17.9% of them spent over $1000. 50% of the students that didn't attend lessons stated that they would have if they could have afforded it. This shows inequity in the accessibility of education during the pandemic as we can infer that quality education could have only been achieved through supplementing the education offered for free at school with costly alternatives (lessons). The poverty line in TnT in 2005 was $665 (TTD) per month (Kairi Consultants Ltd, 2007, 21). Any student that lives near that poverty line would not be able to afford lessons which gives an unfair advantage to those that can.

8% of the respondents stated that their studies were hindered by the pandemic as they had to work (these respondents were all female, however, more research has to be done to identify whether there is a link between sex and child labour, or if these findings were a result of chance) and 40% of the respondents knew someone whose studies were hindered. This again shows inequity in the access to education as those less fortunate respondents would be at a disadvantage to those who could spend their free time studying.

According to the respondents, 46% of them experienced weekly online connectivity issues and at the start of the pandemic, 10% of them didn't own a device that was suitable for online learning. As a result of this, we can assume that many of them regularly missed out on live classes because of things like their WiFi not working or having to share a device with someone else. This again gave an advantage to wealthier students who likely already had fast WiFi and a personal device when the pandemic commenced.

Policy Suggestions

Thus far, the study found that during the pandemic students were given a lower quality of education, education was more difficult to access and poorer students were more disadvantaged.

To help improve access to quality education, some policies could be implemented, such as creating study centres at libraries or community centres where disenfranchised students could access fast internet for the entire day. Presently, internet and computer access are limited to only 30 minutes of daily usage at the national libraries (National Library and Information System Authority, 2002).

Also, 62% of the respondents receiving no assistance from their school when they normally would have, highlights a problem with some of the previous policies such as the textbook renting service offered at schools. This can be fixed by improving the number of textbooks made available and by putting infrastructure in place such that students could still access the textbooks even when they aren't allowed to congregate at school. Getting teachers to attend classes more frequently would also improve the access to quality education in TnT as it would improve TSRs.