The Barbados-based Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) is collaborating with the Caricom Secretariat and OECS Commission to facilitate the training of approximately 15 000 educators in skills to assist their students to overcome the learning losses occasioned by the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
The capacity-building course is designed to support educators with the implementation of the CDB-CARICOM-OECS Learning Recovery and Enhancement Programme (Let’s REAP), which is expected to begin the first week in October this year.
The programme will improve the competencies of five cohorts of teachers in three modules over two years and targets educators from all member states and associate member states of Caricom.
Upon successful completion, participants will receive a certificate from the University of the West Indies (UWI) Joint Boards of Teacher Education.
The 45-hour course will focus on three core components: Leadership and Accountability, Assessment and Differentiated Instruction, and Communities of Practice (CoP).
In Leadership and Accountability, educators are expected to garner knowledge on creating enabling and conducive conditions for learning, as well as distributive leadership and accountability in a school setting.
Under the Assessment and Differentiated Instruction Module, educators are expected to learn how to develop and analyse diagnostic and other forms of formative assessments, use the assessments to effectively tailor lessons to the individual learning needs of each student, and develop competence in differentiating instruction to ensure each learner succeeds.
The CoP module is expected to train educators on how to coordinate teamwork and collaboration in school and virtual environments to improve teaching-learning.
The course is being delivered online and will seek to model how communities of practices are implemented by equipping participants with tools to form online learning groups to support each other as they hone their skills in leadership, accountability, and assessment for learning.
About 15 000 educators in the region will be trained to assist their students to overcome the learning losses occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic
The Let’s REAP for Caribbean schools programme was developed in response to the learning loss occasioned by disruptions to schooling due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Research showed that learning gaps have widened between high-performing and low-performing students, especially for those with low socio-economic status, and those who have special educational needs or a disability.
Let’s REAP was launched in July last year with input from the Caricom Regional Network of Planning Officers, the Caribbean Union of Teachers, the Caribbean Association for Principals of Secondary Schools, and the Caribbean Examination Council.
(CMC)