THE Ministry of Education, on Monday, announced that the closure of school due to the presence of coronavirus (COVID-19) in Guyana, has been extended to April 20, 2020 since the pandemic is not yet under control.

Due to the action of the ministry, several television stations, online producers and local cable companies have taken the decision to alter their regular programming and broadcast content so that they will be beneficial to pupils and students during the period that they will be at home.

Speaking with representatives from a few of the main broadcasting stations, all of them acknowledged that they have a critical role to play at this time, especially in bridging the gap of educating the students since they will be away from school.
Programme Developer at the National Communications Network (NCN), Andrea Bryan-Garner, told the Guyana Chronicle that they are currently in the process of creating virtual classrooms on television for the children at home.

She said that this project is being done in a partnership with Lance Hinds, who is the CEO of BrainCentral.

Shedding light on this project, Bryan-Garner explained that BrainCentral is a local company, founded by Hinds, that offers online tests and quizzes for pupils and students of all grades, and even for teachers. It is the same idea and content of BrainCentral that NCN will attempt to televise.

“We are working with BrainCentral to merge our platforms, seamlessly and provide educational content for our children. At the moment, we are testing to see if it will work, and once the test is successful, we want to reel out content before the week is out. The idea is to create virtual classrooms on television. This is especially meaningful for those who may not have access to online resources. NCN has national reach and would therefore be accessible to a wide cross section of the viewing public. So these educational programmes will show at different times of day, depending on the grade,” she said.
Additionally, she said Ministry of Education’s Interactive Radio Instruction (IRI) for Grades one to three and Broadcast to Schools (Grades three to six) are aired on NCN’s Voice of Guyana (VOG) 560AM/102.5FM and relayed to our eight regional radio stations.
Meanwhile, local cable company, E-Networks, is also playing their part. Given that a large percentage of Guyanese homes are hooked up to cable, E-Networks is also tweaking their TV guide to cater to the needs of the children that will be tuning in.
Media Coordinator at the Cable Company, Mellisa Ramnarine, said that they have recognised their role as well, and is working on selecting more educational content and content to keep the children meaningfully engaged.

“We are going through content such as Brain Game – Are you smarter than a fifth grader? We are going through videos that focus on teaching Math, we have documentaries, Science programmes and things like why do we get sick, those are some of the things that we have so far. But we are still going through the content to make sure that it is appropriate, to see if we can actually air them. But this will be completed today (yesterday), and the new guide will be effective from tomorrow (today). We have cartoons that were already adjusted since last week, but that was mostly for the smaller age groups. But since school will be closed until the new term, we’re going to adjust the guides to accommodate all the age groups,” Ramnarine said.
However, she noted that their content will be short programmes, so that they can still accommodate the elections coverage.

“We are also airing Newsroom’s elections coverage, and that is unpredictable. So we will be showing short content for now, in the event that something pops up, we wouldn’t have to cut into anything to accommodate what was happening,” she added.
In addition to the TV stations and cable networks, the Ministry of Education has been continuously encouraging parents and guardians to tune into the Guyana Learning Channel (Cable 29 or Channel 42) for daily educational and interactive learning sessions for their children.
There is also a website that the Ministry created for children to access free learning resources to remain meaningfully engaged: www.education.gov.gy