Haiti
Description
Haiti's response to school closure.
Context
- 4,430,814 students in the whole country
- Preschool: 613,160
- Fundamental: (1st to 9th grade): 3,347,241
- Secondary: 410,413
- 18,551 schools
74,692 teachers (preschool to 6th grade)
Ministry of Education (MENFP)
NGOs
Immediate response
Classes were cancelled at the national level and for all grades, including preschools.
Schools reopened on August 17th, 2020.
When schools were schools, they were used for different purposes including: (i) as isolation centers for the sick; (ii) as areas to recharge electronic devices; and (iii) as distribution hubs for take home school feeding rations. The IDB and World Bank financed school feeding programs are continuing to use schools in the programs as bases to deliver take home school feeding rations to beneficiaries on a monthly basis
The MENFP used radio, internet and television for distance teaching and learning.
Not yet however technical assistance is being financed through the IDB financed project to support the Ministry in this aspect.
Support Tools
Not at this time but the IDB supported the MENFP in developing a catalogue of locally available resources and is hiring 2 specialized organisations including EDC and BlueButterfly (Seseme street spin off) to assist and develop context specific content.
Both radio and television channels existed but had not been effectively used in years. As such, there is no content that is specifically tied to curricular content – this is being developed now.
- The MENFP education radio channel has been activated
- The MENFP internet resource site has been activated and content is being uploaded.
- Robocalls / SMS have been set up to disseminate quick information and eventually pedagogical content.
- The MENFP educational television programming has begun broadcasting (with haphazard content pulled from different sources)
Ongoing: the country has launched an online resource platform that groups resources for students and parents to access. Remote learning low technology solutions are also activated by civil society including radio and tv programming.
The IDB financed project has contracted EDC to provide technical assistance on remote learning assistance and learning management systems.
Education content is being developed in 2 steps:
Phase 1: External partnerships: Immediate radio broadcasting of available content regardless of specific ties to curricular content. This includes a partnership with Blue Buttery (Lakou Kajou) which has radio, youtube, and television material in Haitian creole and which is aligned with come curricular objectives. This Phase also includes reading books and signing songs that are well known in order to simply keep children engaged.
Phase 2: MENFP: Preparing curriculum aligned and validated radio programming, online programming and television content.
Connectivity
The MENFP has developed an online resource platform and overtime hopes to develop the platform into an online learning platform however this is not yet on the action plan for the short term. In response to the pandemic as well to the regular shocks to the education system, the MENFP is integrating distance education as a cross cutting theme in the Haiti Education 2020-2030 Sector Plan that is set to be approved at the end of July.
Not possible due to only 40% of households being connected to electricity in the country. Internet coverage is significantly less than electricity coverage. EDU and ENE are in discussions for the medium and long term for expanding access to the grid to households and schools.
Challenges
The main challenge that Haiti faces is a lack of connectivity to electricity throughout the country (only 40% of the population has electricity in their households). This reality severely reduces the ability to reach large portions of the population through radio, television, and internet content.
Moreover, from a technical perspective, the Ministry of Education does not have distance learning content already developed, and will need to rapidly relay on outside partnership in order to provide a continuity of services in the short term.
Teachers are not trained for distance education.
An added challenge is the socio-political unrest.
Reopening
Due to the number of obstacles to distance learning in Haiti, the governement is focusing on reopening schools to continue the 2019 - 2020 school year (based on where they left off in March). In parallel they will further develop their distance education strategy and tools, but this will be a medium and long term activity given that basic connection to electricity and internet needs to be expanded first.;
The IDB financed project uses a call center which regularly calls schools to identify if they are indeed open, and importantly how many children are enrolled compared to pre-COVID-19. It is however important to note that schools in Haiti have essentially been closed since July 2019 and continue to not function well despite the official reopening in August because of the socio-political unrest. It is therefore important to understand that COVID-19 is not the only reason for school closures and related challenges in Haiti.
The World Bank will finance diagnostic assessment.