1,000 teachers to be trained to better teach secondary school students

The Ministry of Education has teamed up with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and United Kingdom-based Tablet Academy (International) to train teachers to better deliver education at the Secondary level.

The new initiative through which Tablet Academy (International) will be offering training and consultancy services, will see 1,000 Grade Seven teachers trained in the four core subjects, in the initial phase. They will be taught using the Microsoft Office 365 A3 Education platform which also offers other possibilities.

According to the Director of the National Centre for Education Resource Development (NCERD), Quenita Walrond-Lewis, 60 teachers will be trained first and will then train and support other teachers.

“Today signifies a departure from the sole reliance on the collection of paper for knowledge building and information training,” she said during the virtual launch on Tuesday.

Walrond-Lewis said teachers will be provided with laptops and the accompanying software while some will receive internet services after a needs assessment.

Minister of Education Priya Manickchand in her remarks noted that “this helps us to build out a more robust system where we can incorporate technology in an aggressive way with what we know already works to be able to be more effective in the classroom.”

She stated that 1,022 devices will be made available.

Chairman of the Tablet Academy (International) Prof. Steve Molyneux explained that the idea of training teachers various technological methods of delivering education is to prepare for the future.

“It is important that we prepare our students and more importantly, our teachers for the class of 2030. And what will this class look like? Well certainly it will be student centric rather than teacher centric, it will be social and highly personalized and it will be supported by technology both at home and school,” he said.

This he noted will not only make the teachers’ work easier but will cater to the needs of a generation which is more dependent on technology for information.

The online learning platform and all of its features cost some $174 million.