Education Ministry Wants Greater Take-Up of Technology Inputs

The Ministry of Education and Youth is urging greater take-up of technology inputs by schools to enhance teaching and learning.

Permanent Secretary in the Ministry, Dr. Kasan Troupe, who spoke to JIS News at the ‘Rapping with the Minister’ forum on Tuesday (February 20) at Jamaica College in St. Andrew. said that “significant investments” have been made in providing teachers and students with access to digital platforms, licences and other resources in keeping with the Technology in Education Policy.

These include the Microsoft 365 education licences, which were introduced in public schools islandwide.

A total of 500,000 licences have been made available to users on the moeschools.edu.jm platform.

“Right now, we are seeing where about 300,000 of those have been taken and what I would describe as being downloaded to personal devices. We have another 200,000 that we are concerned about,” Dr. Troupe said.

“We started rolling this out from last year in the new school year, and every year we reactivate the licences so they (users) can continue benefiting. So, we are a little concerned because it is money expended and we would prefer for the resources to be utilised in the interest of the students and teachers. For the Microsoft licences, I think we spent about $80 million for the 500,000 licences,” the Permanent Secretary noted.

Dr. Troupe said there has also been slow uptake of the eBooks provided by the Ministry and encouraged school administrators to coordinate activities to promote increased access.

“This year, for the printed books and eBooks, we spent $1.2 billion for the secondary level, and I think we did about 40,000 licences for eBooks,” she pointed out.

“We have met with our principals to encourage [them] to be deliberate in organising the students for the downloads… . You will need that kind of deliberate intervention from principals and teachers,” the Permanent Secretary said.

She emphasised the need for students and school administrators to take advantage of these digital systems.

“We have to ensure that our students are using the technology… not to go back to printed books but to have a hybrid approach in the new model of education,” she said.