By Yero S. Bah
An entirely new teaching method has been introduced by the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education (MOBSE) for the academic year 2019-2020 because of the coronavirus global pandemic.
Teachers are asked to stay at home while students are enjoined to be glued to their TV screens or radio sets since lessons of core subjects such as Mathematics, English language, Social Studies and General Science are delivered on these platforms. These new media and e-learning styles have presented new challenges for teachers, students and parents in a country where majority of the masses see such platforms as luxuries but also lacked access to them.
Online learning might not be an entirely new phenomenon in the Gambia, however, most students in the country are not familiar with the method, coupled with poverty and inaccessibility to such platforms, thus making everything a “rocket science” for many people in this tiny West African nation.
Mr. Gibbi Ceesay is a General Science teacher at Old Yundum Upper Basic School. He believes the current shutdown of schools would have negative impacts on every student, especially for the examination classes of “Nine and Twelve grades” noting the examinations are indefinitely postponed to an unknown date or time.
“It is even possible that no international examination will be conducted this year,” he hinted. Teacher Ceesay stated that it’s unusual for schools to be closed at the time they were actually shutdown, but he held that, since it is a global pandemic,”there is nothing people can do about it”.
Describing the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education’s media schooling as a good initiative–Schools closed but learning continues–the Old Yundum Upper Basic School teacher is however, concerned that lack of access to radio and TV sets or online platforms would create an uneven learning environment for students, adding Gambians, particularly students, “are not used to such learning platforms”.
The General Science teacher, therefore, suggested that the Ministry should use the holidays to compensate the time lost to the coronavirus period, opining it would help a lot to catch-up with the missed periods even though it might not be enough.
He lamented that most students don’t revisit their books after school hours, observing such students stand a greater chance of losing more in this coronavirus outbreak period.
“However, there are some students who will gain too because they will concentrate on these online platforms to refresh their minds,” Ceesay noted.
He informed this medium that teachers have created special WhatsApp groups to purposely help students whenever they come across certain difficult topics from their lessons. But the problem with these WhatsApp pages, he pointed out, is that “not all students have smartphones” to access the platforms being used.
At that juncture, he emphasized that whenever students are affected, teachers are affected too, adding teachers get salaries while they are not going into the classrooms- an issue he morally finds disturbing.
“Teachers always want to go to work to help their students,” the Upper Basic School teacher said.
