President Luis Abinader and Education Minister Roberto Fulcar are scheduled to be at 8:30 am at the Plaza de la Bandera, 27 de Febrero Avenue and Luperón for the ceremony marking the school year restart in the Dominican Republic. The Ministry of Education has mandated distance learning for the 2020-21 school year.
Fulcar says everything is ready for the official start of school in the Dominican Republic on Monday, 2 November 2020. Online classes at several private schools had already begun in August. The Dominican government disallowed in person learning for 2020. An estimated 2.2 million students are enrolled in public schools, and another 600,000 in private schools.
Fulcar says the public schools content has been scripted. There will be chapters on sports and citizen education to instill values in the students. For example, Fulcar said that the Constitutional Court has collaborated to create the content for the chapter on the Constitution.
The minister said that half a million children have laptops in the public school system and will participate in online programs prepared for Teams and Zoom, among other platforms. The remaining public school children will follow the TV and radio education programs. 150 radio stations and around 100 TV channels contracted to air the classes. Children have been provided with notebooks to keep up with the TV and radio programming.
There will be a channel for each grade. The regular TV channels have been contracted to air three hours of classes in the morning and three in the afternoon. The cable channels will continually retransmit the classes 24/7.
Not everyone is sure how this will work out. The Dominican Teachers Association (ADP), the public school teachers’ union, says more teaching training is necessary. The first week is time for parents to visit the schools to pick up the notebooks and receive instructions on the channels per grade and how the program will unfold.
Read more in Spanish:
Listin Diario
1 November 2020