The COVID-19 pandemic has slowed down the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Council’s certification rate, its executive chair said Wednesday. But students are slowly returning to class to gain much-needed hands-on learning.
Henderson Eastmond said because of the lockdowns and COVID-19 restrictions since the pandemic started last March, students were for an extended period unable to attend face-to-face classes to be taught the practical components of their respective programmes.
But he said students who were taught the theoretical component of their programmes online are now beginning to return to institutions for practical training, including the Career Development Institute (CDI), Samuel Jackman Prescod Institute (SJPI), Barbados Community College (BCC), and private training facilities across the island.
Eastmond said: “COVID has affected us in our normal programmes for the CVQs [Caribbean Vocational Qualifications] because as you know, technical education has a heavy hands-on component. And for most of the institutions, they could not put that on and that was so across the world.
“We work with the training institutions using standards and curriculums and we depend on them for delivery. Most of the institutions were closed and they could only teach the cognitive part online. So everything was on pause for some time and our certification rate has slowed down because we are waiting for those cohorts to complete their practicals.
“So we are expecting a new wave of certifications to come in the next couple of months, providing that we remain safe and that we don’t have to go into lockdown again. COVID has affected everybody.”
But the TVET Executive Director said that when Barbados went into shutdown mode at the start of the first local spread of the virus in March 2020, TVET’s staff were fully prepared to work from home because they had already been doing so occasionally.
He said: “We were ahead of the game so when the Prime Minister closed the country down we just shifted home. We were already working from home because some of the staff members usually do it, so we had that ability. We were set up to work from home long before the pandemic.” (AH)
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