10,000 students in need of intensive academic help
Published:Friday | March 4, 2022 | 12:09 AM
The Ministry of Education and Youth’s ‘Yard-to-Yard’ initiative is said to be bearing fruit, with at least 40,000 of the 120,000 students who could not be accounted for since the onset of COVID-19 in March 2020 now located and being offered special support in schools.
Fayval Williams, minister of education and youth, told members of the Standing Finance Committee of Parliament on Thursday that 70 per cent of the students have undergone diagnostic tests and the results have shown that about 10,000 need intensive, hands-on assistance.
Parliamentarians were also told that all but five schools have received the seal of approval from the Ministry of Health and Wellness to reopen on March 7.
The ministry says it has distributed 5,000 COVID-19 testing kits to several schools.
However, quizzed about the inadequacy of the number of testing kits, Williams said that the ministry was moving to secure an additional 100,000.
Williams also said that school canteens would reopen, and Nutrition Products Limited was in the process of restarting its operations to deliver food to schools.
With the cessation of in-person learning in 2020, Nutrition Products Limited had significantly scaled back its operations.