MINISTRY OF EDUCATION, YOUTH, CULTURE, SOCIAL & LIBRARY SERVICES Road-map for Reopening of Schools After achieving a successful transition from phase 1-3 of the Road-map for the Reopening of schools, the Ministry of Education adopted a modified version of phase 4 which saw only grades 5 and 6 students return to in class instructions. Meanwhile, students of forms 5 and 6 continued in class tutelage while all other students participating virtually in a blended scheme. As a result of the rapidly rising number of COVID-19 cases, phase 5 of the Roadmap anticipated on January 4th had to be deferred at least until 29th January when the situation would be reassessed to determine the feasibility of reopening schools for in class instruction. During this interim period, we have experienced further elevations to the rate of infection in the Turks and Caicos Islands, having realized our largest number of confirmed new cases this week. Considering the health factors, the Ministry of Education, in consultation with the Ministry of Health, has arrived at the following decisions: Effective 1st February, all schools will continue with online learning only. This position will be re-evaluated by 10th February, 2021. Students of 4th and 5th forms (High School) are allowed on campus only for SBAs and other practical assessments, external examinations and mock examinations. The Ministry will provide a subsequent update on the implementation of Phase 5 of the Road-map and plans for the final school term We appreciate the level of understanding by teachers and parents as we navigate through these challenging times. ENDS Government Press Office Waterloo Road, Grand Turk Turks & Caicos Islands Tel: (649) 338-3924/ 338-3925 Ext: 3924/3925 Email: tcigpressrelease@gov.tc Web: gov.tc/pressoffice We are on facebook: www.facebook.com/pressofficetcig

Memo to Principals - Commencement of Term 2 2021_v2 (2)

PHASE 4: Roadmap for the Reopening of TCI Schools Latest News 29 October 2020 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION, YOUTH, CULTURE, SOCIAL AND LIBRARY SERVICES GRAND TURK, TURKS & CAICOS ISLANDS, BRITISH WEST INDIES TELEPHONE: (649) 338-3134 Ext. 3134 FAX: (649) 946-2722 29 /10/ 2020 MINISTER OF EDUCATION PRESS RELEASE PHASE 4: Roadmap for the Reopening of TCI Schools Following the successful implementation of Phases 1-3 of the Roadmap for the Reopening of TCI Schools, the Ministry of Education is currently embarking on Phase 4 activation. Based on our roadmap, we would have seen the return of students to full face to face classes in Salt Cay, Grand Turk, South Caicos and North Caicos on November 3rd. However, acting on the advice of health officials and key stakeholders, particularly school administrators, the Ministry has reviewed the Phase 4 model and decided to modify the return of students. Additionally, community testing for Covid-19 has commenced, Health officials have advised that this would give a better indication of the level of containment in our communities. One initiative involves testing teachers before the activation of Phases 4 and 5. As part of the Phase 4 modification, on Monday, November 9th, students of Grades 5 & 6 will be allowed to return to school for face to face instruction. This modification will better prepare our 5th and 6th Graders for transitioning to high school. Currently, Forms 4 and 5 students are allowed face to face instruction, so the return of Grades 5 & 6 will provide a more balanced approach. The remaining students in public and private schools will continue with remote learning. The Ministry is committed, as indicated in the Roadmap document, to have all students return to face to face instruction in January 2021. May God Bless these Beautiful by Nature Turks and Caicos Islands as we continue to play our part in keeping each other safe. ENDS

Congratulations to all our children, teachers and parents on your first two weeks of Home Learning!

Teaching and Learning:
Teachers have enjoyed getting to know their new year group and have spent time understanding and adjusting to each child’s unique home learning situation. They have settled into the demands of live teaching, and have discovered through the experience what has worked well and what not so well.

Thank you!
We are very proud of our children who show up for class each day, eager and ready to learn. We recognise how different this must all feel for them and how well they have adapted to this temporary form of learning. On an on-going basis we would appreciate you encouraging your child joins the class promptly at start of the day – 8:30am.
We know online learning isn’t perfect, and teachers are extremely grateful for your patience and understanding as they adjust to providing education remotely. They appreciate your support at home and in picking up and dropping off learning materials.

On-going enhancements include:
• Strategies to reduce “listening time’ and increase child “doing time.”
• Ensuring children experience success completing lessons, working independently and receiving feedback in a cycle that informs future learning.
• Introduction of choice boards for extension activities to provide opportunities for projects and child interest-led investigations.
• Archiving activities at an appropriate point to clear out children’s inboxes.
• Utilising breakout rooms to create opportunities for different working environments, discussions and small group / 1-1 connections, and online social engagement.

Children’s Feedback:
This week teachers are going to be gathering the children’s feedback on our programme so far. Year 6 have shared positive and informative responses and we look forward to sharing these along with others from across the school next week.

Technology:
• Our tech team continue to provide support and complete network upgrades to improve the stability of our internet connection. Faulty network switches and older cables have now been replaced. We apologise that although work was undertaken during the summer, we were faced with unexpected challenges during the first week of school.
• A class emergency contact WhatsApp group has been set up so that we can communicate promptly should our internet or power go down. Teachers have shared response plans with their class should outage be for a long period.
• A parent survey will be sent out today to ascertain technological challenges you may be having so we can support these as much as possible.


We still hope to commence some onsite activities over the upcoming weeks and will advise when we have permission to do so.

Please continue to communicate with us if your child is experiencing any difficulties learning at home.

We appreciate your continued support.

We look forward to receiving responses to our Parent Home Learning Survey that we will send out this week.  We thank our parents in advance for taking the time to share their honest feedback with us.  We are committed to making our home learning experience as rich as possible for our students.  Taking into consideration this feedback and our teachers ongoing reflections and hard work, we will strive to continue to enhance our programme  as we progress through the term.

We'd like to say a HUGE shout out to our amazing tech friends for all their on-going support. Bites and Bytes and Digicel have been working behind the scenes tirelessly to keep us connected in the best way possible. Thank you to our 'techie' parents too for your advice and support.

Middle School - Online School - Expectations-1 These expectations have been shared with all of our middle school students it would be appreciated if they were reinforced at home, too. We hope that by following these expectations, the process of virtual schooling will become more effortless as the term progresses. Primary School expectations will be sent home next week once they have been created together with the children. As always, if we can support you in any way, please ask.

"Congratulations...we made it through the first day of the 2020/21 school year. Well done, everyone! We had some glitches which were to be expected on the first day. Even though we had made all the necessary preparations ahead of time, we still lost internet connections at times during the morning. Our Tech Team from Bits and Bytes, were on hand to iron out technological hiccups and frustrations and hopefully this will mean a smoother connection moving forward. There’s much for us to reflect and improve upon and we aim to focus on all of the positives that we can take from today’s experiences and how we can build on these. As the role models in our students’ lives we continue to display a positive attitude towards distance learning each and every day – addressing future challenges with a growth mindset. We encourage you to do the same at home. With your support, we are dedicated to providing all our students with an engaging home learning experience. Thank you to all our fantastically adaptable and patient children, our supportive parents/carers and our amazingly resilient and hard-working teachers. You are all SUPERHEROES!"

Guidelines for daycare & out of school childcare COVID-19 -Final

We received this document today from the Education Department. Roadmap to Reopening of Schools

PRESS CONFERENCE Good Morning Ladies and gentlemen of the press core and our listening public, Since March of this year, as a result of the impact of this pandemic, we as a people, as a country and the world over are forced to adopt to new approaches and implemented new ways of working. This is particularly true in the education sector. Almost overnight, countries had to re-engineer education system and their structured approach for the delivery of learning. This is no different in the Turks and Caicos Islands. We had to make a paradigm shift from the century long approach of face to face learning and group work collaborative strategies which we have been accustomed, to almost entirely a new system of online learning. This have led to many unanticipated obstacles and the Ministry and Department working closely with our stakeholders; our school administrators, our teachers, our parents and our students had to overcome these challenges. As we embark on a new stage of our journey into the unknown in this academic year, the challenge going forward will not be easy. It is anticipated that we will face many more obstacles, but with the Grace of our Almighty and our determination as a people, I believe in my heart that we will persevere. I will present our strategy for reopening of schools here in the Turks and Caicos Islands. In arriving at this decision, I take great pride in the amount of work which went into this and for that, I thank all our partners for working tirelessly thus far in presenting us with a Roadmap for the reopening of School. A plan, which will ensure that our students are first and foremost are learning in a healthy and safe environment. The Second priority which was considered in developing this plan, was the need to ensure effective learning. I pause here to re-emphasize, the need to ensure effective learning. You see, we want to ensure that all schools put in place the necessary mechanism, tools and build the necessary staff capacity to ensure efficiency and the delivery of their lessons to students which would ensure effective learning. Consequently, the guidelines which were published last week for consultation, were so designed to provide schools with the minimum standards which must be implemented towards achieving the two mentioned goals; healthy environment for learning and effective learning for our students. The road-map for the reopening of schools will be implemented in a phased approach over the course of the next four (4) months. We have built within this plan, critical period for review and assessment. At these periods, the Cabinet will review reports and take into consideration the trajectory of the number of cases on island and make a decision on the way forward. Phase 1- This is Orientation and Assessment Period- from 31st August to 14th September, Schools will operate online, finalize plans for online learning, build capacity of their teachers and parents to using these online portals and assess the students on their stage of learning in preparation for the next phase. Phase 2- from 14th September to 2nd October – All schools throughout the TCI will operate from an online modality. Phase 3 – from 5th October to 30th October – Online leaning will continue for lower classes, but students in 4th and 5th forms as well as students attending Higher Education such as TCICC can attend face to face classes within the schools, combine with some classes continuing online. Phase 4 – from 2nd November to 16th December 2020, with the exception of Providenciales schools, we will now start to bring all other students on the Islands of Salt Cay, Grand Turk, South Caicos, Middle Caicos and North Caicos to attend face to face classes in school as well as combination of online learning Phase 5 – from 4th January onwards, we will bring all students including students on Providenciales back into the classroom, using online and blended learning. Further details of the phase reopening and the consultation will be shared in a Press Conference early next week. Thank You Hon. Karen Evadine Malcolm Minister of Education, Youth, Culture, Social & Library Services

School Statement: Plans and Protocols for the Reopening of School  

We hope to offer onsite learning for all students. In order to establish whether this can be achieved, while meeting all of the Government guidelines, we request that you complete this short survey by Friday 21st August: Provo Primary & Middle School: Return to School Survey

DRAFT Covid-19 Guidelines-Protocols for Returning to Schools TCI-1

Provo Primary and Middle Schools have received the draft guidelines for the re-opening of schools in September.  The schools' leadership team have met to discuss these and provide feedback to the Department of Education.

We will attend meetings with the Department of Education over the coming days, alongside local government and private schools, and participate fully in the consultation process.We will further update our parent body as soon as we have clear guidance on the reopening of our school, the protocols we will be following and the format of the education we will be providing in the first instance.

Please be assured that the received Draft Guidelines match with the planning and staff training that we have in place. This ensures that we will be able to work quickly to make plans ahead of the new school year.

Update: Wednesday 5th August 2020

Scenarios and Planning:

We have been busy preparing the school for re-opening in September. While we await government protocols on the reopening of schools, due in the coming weeks, we want to share some of our planning at this stage.

All staff have worked to prepare classrooms and protocols in order to help us meet a range of scenarios that may face us in September. Our intention is to be ready for all eventualities, so that learning for our students can be seamless during the upcoming term and beyond.

• On-site learning with social distancing and hygiene protocols:

We are hopeful that school will be open, with some modifications, in September. We have plans in place, in line with government Daycare guidelines, to keep our school community safe. This will include changes to our cleaning protocols, temperature checks on arrival, new routines at drop-off and collection and playtimes. We will implement advice around the wearing of face-masks, hand washing and hand sanitizer. Classrooms have been set up to enable reasonable/appropriate social distancing. Learning resources have also been evaluated to ensure safe use.

• Blended learning:

Should the government mandate a maximum group-size in classrooms, we have made plans for how in-school learning can be delivered alongside home-learning. In this scenario, larger classes may be split into smaller groups. One group would receive on-site learning while the other accesses online home-learning. Groups would then rotate to ensure that all children have access to their teacher and on-site learning, as well as being prepared to complete home-learning tasks effectively.

• Online home-learning:

We have prepared for the eventuality that school is instructed to close by continuing to train and prepare our staff for online learning provision. Additional training will continue ahead of the new term in September. Our online home-learning provision will follow a more structured school day, enabling students to receive live teaching alongside their peers while continuing to provide some flexibility for families that need it. The structure of the day will include: a number of daily live lessons in the morning and afternoons; scheduled tasks to be submitted online; break-times and lunch-times.

• Learning platform:

We are in the process of linking our Seesaw learning platform to the live video-conferencing element of our provision. This should make it much easier for children to access their live lessons each day, as well as helping them to work more independently on any tasks set.

In the meantime, we recommend that all families plan to obtain the following items, which we feel will form an essential part of the coming school year:

• a laptop/tablet device to support learning. Even in school, our bank of computing devices will likely be unavailable due to COVID-19 protocols.
• comfortable face masks. We recommend that children have multiple face masks, so that they have a change after breaktimes/PE or when needed.

Our new school year will begin on Wednesday 2nd September.